US International Relations

United Nations logo. [Source: United Nations]The United Nations is formed. Article 51 of the charter states that a country has the “right of individual or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a member of the United Nations,” but otherwise prohibits the use of force in international affairs. [United Nations, 6/26/1945]

US State Department spokesman Richard Browning says of Italy’s upcoming elections, “The United States is making it crystal clear that it will use force if necessary to prevent Italy from going communist in its upcoming elections.” The CIA will spend $20 million to ensure that the Christian Democrats win control of the country’s government. [Hunt, 9/1/2009, pp. 5]

In a report to President Eisenhower, the Joint Chiefs of Staff make the following observation: “We should do what is necessary even if the result is to change the American way of life. We could lick the whole world if we are willing to adopt the system of Adolf Hitler.” [Hunt, 9/1/2009, pp. 5]

Secretary of State John Foster Dulles says of the upcoming Vietnam elections, “I don’t believe Diem wants to hold elections and I believe we should support him in this.” Dulles is referring to the scheduled 1956 elections between Vietnam’s president, Ngo Dinh Diem, recently installed by US intervention, and Communist leader Ho Chi Minh. Both Dulles and Diem believe that if the elections go off as planned, Ho Chi Minh will win in a landslide. [Hunt, 9/1/2009, pp. 5]

During a news conference, President Dwight D. Eisenhower answers a question about the idea of an American “preventative war” against Communism by saying the following: “All of us have heard this term ‘preventive war’ since the earliest days of Hitler. I recall that is about the first time I heard it. In this day and time, if we believe for one second that nuclear fission and fusion, that type of weapon, would be used in such a war—what is a preventive war? I would say a preventive war, if the words mean anything, is to wage some sort of quick police action in order that you might avoid a terrific cataclysm of destruction later. A preventive war, to my mind, is an impossibility today. How could you have one if one of its features would be several cities lying in ruins, several cities where many, many thousands of people would be dead and injured and mangled, the transportation systems destroyed, sanitation implements and systems all gone? That isn’t preventive war; that is war. I don’t believe there is such a thing; and, frankly, I wouldn’t even listen to anyone seriously that came in and talked about such a thing.” [White House, 8/11/1954]

A joint project is started in which students from Chile will be sent to learn economics at the University of Chicago using funding for tuition and other expenses from the US government as well as private organizations such as the Ford Foundation. The University of Chicago’s Department of Economics is at this time a bastion of strict adherence to pro-free market thought. The chairman of this department, Theodore W. Schultz, came up with this plan along with an official from the US government during a meeting in Santiago, Chile, in 1953. Schultz himself stated that he desired that the countries of the third world, “work out their economic salvation by relating to us and by using our way of achieving their economic development.” By 1970, some 100 students from Chile will have sought advanced degrees from the University of Chicago. [Klein, 2007, pp. 59-60]

The United States helps the Salvadoran government organize a rural paramilitary force known as the Democratic Nationalist Organization (ORDEN) and the Salvadoran National Security Agency (ANSESAL) under the auspices of General Jose Alberto “Chele” Medrano, who is a senior officer in the National Guard and Armed Forces High Command of El Salvador. As early as 1963, the Green Berets send over ten counterinsurgency trainers to help Medreno. Both agencies are formed with the stated purpose of combating communism. ORDEN is tasked with “indoctrinat[ing] the peasants regarding the advantages of the democratic system and the disadvantages of the communist system,” but also operates as an intelligence network. Intelligence relating to “subversive” activities will regularly be relayed to ANSESAL and then to the office of the president, who will then take “appropriate action.” ORDEN in particular will be later blamed for numerous human rights abuses, with Amnesty International accusing it of being created with the intention of using “clandestine terror against government opponents.” One of the offshoots of ORDEN, the White Hand (Mano Blanco), is later called “nothing less that the birth of the death squads” by a former US ambassador to El Salvador. [The Progressive, 5/1984; Montgomery, 1995, pp. 55-56]

US forces at the infamous “Checkpoint Charlie” at the Berlin Wall, 1961. [Source: US Army]Former Secretary of State Dean Acheson responds to a request by President John F. Kennedy for a systematic review of US policies towards East and West Germany. Acheson recommends that the US prove its commitment to West Germany by sending “an armored division, with another division in reserve” up the autobahn through East Germany and into West Berlin. Acheson admits, “There is… a substantial possibility that war might result.” Kennedy refuses Acheson’s recommendation, realizing that to implement the idea would probably trigger a war with the Soviet Union. [Foreign Policy, 10/22/2010]

President Dwight D. Eisenhower gives the following warning during his farewell speech: “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.” [Carter, 2004, pp. 47]

US Consul Henry Dearborn, the senior American diplomat to the Dominican Republic, says about that nation’s brutal dictator Generalissimo Rafael Trujillo shortly after his assassination (see February 1930-May 30, 1961): “He had his torture chambers, he had his political assassinations. But he kept law and order, cleaned the place up, made it sanitary, built public works, and he didn’t bother the United States. So that didn’t bother us.” [Hunt, 9/1/2009, pp. 6]

US Secretary of State Dean Rusk sends British Foreign Minister Lord Home a letter which includes the following passage: “[W]e do believe that [Dr. Cheddi] Jagan and his American wife are very far to the left indeed and that his accession to power in British Guiana would be a most troublesome setback in this hemisphere. Would you be willing to have this looked into urgently to see whether there is anything which you or we can do to forestall such an eventuality?” The British foreign minister will respond to this letter a week later (see August 18, 1961). [US Department of State, 8/11/1961]

Guyana President Cheddi Jagan pays a visit to the White House, seeking financial aid and offering assurances that Guyana will not host a Soviet base. President Kennedy tells Jagan that the US is not concerned with his left-leaning politics. Kennedy says: “National independence. This is the basic thing. As long as you do that, we don’t care whether you are socialist, capitalist, pragmatist or whatever. We regard ourselves as pragmatists.” Also in attendance at the meeting are the president’s special assistant Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., and George Ball, the Assistant Secretary for Economic Affairs at the State Department. [New York Times, 10/30/1994; Ishmael, 2005Sources:Cheddi Jagan] Following Jagan’s departure, US President John F. Kennedy will meet in secret with his top national security officers and issue a direct order to remove Dr. Jagan from power. [New York Times, 10/30/1994; CJ Research Center, 1999Sources: Unnamed US Government officials familiar with the secret papers.] Sources will note that “Though many Presidents have ordered the CIA to undermine foreign leaders, they say, the Jagan papers are a rare smoking gun: a clear written record, without veiled words or plausible denials, of a President’s command to depose a Prime Minister.” [New York Times, 10/30/1994]

The CIA promotes civil unrest in the Caribbean country of Guyana. “Previously unheard-of radio stations went on the air in the capital, Georgetown,” the New York Times will later recount. “The papers printed false stories about approaching Cuban warships. Civil servants walked out. The labor unions revolted. Riots took the lives of more than 100 people.” [New York Times, 10/30/1994]

The CIA conducts an intensive propaganda campaign against Joao Goulart which dates from at least the 1962 election operation (see January 1, 1963) and which includes the financing of mass urban demonstrations. [Blum, 1995]

US President John F. Kennedy denies accusations that the US is meddling in the affairs of Guyana. He states: “The United States supports the idea that every people should have the right to make a free choice of the kind of government they want. [Dr. Cheddi] Jagan who has recently elected Prime Minister in British Guiana, is a Marxist, but the United States doesn’t object because that choice was made by honest election, which he won.” [CJ Research Center, 1999]

The US State Department drafts a planning document titled, “Possible Courses of Action in British Guiana.” In it, its authors ask: “Can we topple [Dr. Cheddi] Jagan while maintaining at least a facade of democratic institutions,” and “Can the PPP be defeated in new elections without obvious interference?” The paper observes that “it is unproven that CIA knows how to manipulate an election in British Guiana without a backfire.” The document also notes: “Disclosure of US involvement would undermine our carefully nurtured position of anti-colonialism among the new nations of Asia and Africa and damage our position in Latin America. It could also strengthen Jagan over the long term if he became a ‘martyr of Yankee imperialism.’” [US Department of State, 3/15/1962]

Guatemalan President Miguel Ydigoras Fuentes is overthrown in a coup and succeeded by his minister of defense, Enrique Peralta Azurdi. According to some sources, the coup plotters were given a green light by President John F. Kennedy, who opposed Fuentes’ decision to allow former president Juan José Arevalo to return from exile and participate in the upcoming presidential elections. [North American Congress on Latin America, 1967; Rabe, 1999, pp. 75]

The CIA organizes a general strike in Guyana, through its client trade unions. The CIA channels fund through the international public workers secretariat Public Services International, and via the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions for a strike lasting 80 days. Historian William Blum later notes that its support “was considerably less than total.” The strike is organized by the local Trades Union Council, headed by US-trained Richard Ishmael, who had received tutelage at the American Institute for Free Labor Development, along with other Guyanese officials. The strike is marked by violence and provocation, including attacks on Premier Cheddi Jagan and his family. A British police report later tags Ishmael as involved in “a terrorist group which…carried out bombings and arson attacks against government buildings during the strike.” [United Kingdom House of Commons, 4/5/1966, pp. 1765-67]

The US, the Soviet Union, and Great Britain sign the Limited Test Ban Treaty (LTBT) outlawing atmospheric nuclear tests as well as nuclear tests in outer space and underwater. Underground tests are also outlawed if they result in spreading radioactive debris outside the territorial limits of the country where the explosion is conducted. [Federation of American Scientists, 12/18/2007]

The UN General Assembly adopts Resolution 2131, titled, “Declaration on the Inadmissibility of Intervention in the Domestic Affairs of States and the Protection of Their Independence and Sovereignty,” which recognizes that “armed intervention is synonymous with aggression and, as such, is contrary to the basic principles on which peaceful international cooperation between States should be built.” It also states that “direct intervention, subversion and all forms of indirect intervention are contrary to these principles and, consequently, constitute a violation of the Charter of the United Nations.” In its declaration, which as a General Assembly resolution is non-binding, it prohibits all forms of intervention by one state “in the internal or external affairs of any other State.”
[United Nations, 12/21/1965]

Excerpts

“All States shall respect the right of self-determination and independence of peoples and nations, to be freely exercised without any foreign pressure, and with absolute respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. Consequently, all States shall contribute to the complete elimination of racial discrimination and colonialism in all its forms and manifestations.”
— December 21, 1965 [United Nations, 12/21/1965]

“The strict observance of these obligations is an essential condition to ensure that nations live together in peace with one another, since the practice of any form of intervention not only violates the spirit and letter of the Charter of the United Nations but also leads to the creation of situations which threaten international peace and security.”
— December 21, 1965 [United Nations, 12/21/1965]

“Every State has an inalienable right to choose its political, economic, social and cultural systems, without interference in any form by another State.”
— December 21, 1965 [United Nations, 12/21/1965]

“Nothing in this Declaration shall be construed as affecting in any manner the relevant provisions of the Charter of the United Nations relating to the maintenance of international peace and security, in particular those contained in Chapters VI, VII and VIII.”
— December 21, 1965 [United Nations, 12/21/1965]

“For the purpose of the present Declaration, the term “State” covers both individual States and groups of States.”
— December 21, 1965 [United Nations, 12/21/1965]

“The use of force to deprive peoples of their national identity constitutes a violation of their inalienable rights and of the principle of non-intervention.”
— December 21, 1965 [United Nations, 12/21/1965]

“No State may use or encourage the use of economic, political or any other type of measures to coerce another State in order to obtain from it the subordination of the exercise of its sovereign rights or to secure from it advantages of any kind. Also, no State shall organize, assist, foment, Finance, incite or tolerate subversive, terrorist or armed activities directed towards the violent overthrow of the regime of another State, or interfere in civil strife in another State.”
— December 21, 1965 [United Nations, 12/21/1965]

“No State has the right to intervene, directly or indirectly, for any reason whatever, in the internal or external affairs of any other State. Consequently, armed intervention and all other forms of interference or attempted threats against the personality of the State or against its political, economic and cultural elements, are condemned.”
— December 21, 1965 [United Nations, 12/21/1965]

“No State has the right to intervene, directly or indirectly, for any reason whatever, in the internal or external affairs of any other State. Consequently, armed intervention and all other forms of interference or attempted threats against the personality of the State or against its political, economic and cultural elements, are condemned.”
— December 21, 1965 [United Nations, 12/21/1965]

The United States vetoes far more Security Council resolutions than any other country. Roughly half of these defend Israeli actions against its neighbors or against the Palestinians in the occupied territories. [Global Policy Forum, 1/2/2005]

Svetlana Stalin, daughter of deceased Soviet leader Josef Stalin, defects to the West. The defection is arranged by the CIA’s station chief in India, David Blee, after Svetlana asks for asylum at the US embassy in Delhi. While officials in Washington are undecided about what to do about her request, Blee puts her on a plane and spirits her out of India to the West. The New York Times will later call this episode “one of Mr. Blee’s biggest early triumphs.” [New York Times, 8/17/2000; Los Angeles Times, 8/18/2000; Guardian, 8/22/2000]

President Lyndon Johnson hears a complaint from Greece’s ambassador to the US about the US’s interference in his nation’s affairs. In a private conversation in the Oval Office, Johnson tells the ambassador: “Listen to me, Mr. Ambassador! F_ck your parliament and your constitution! America is an elephant. Cyprus is a flea. Greece is a flea. If those two fleas continue itching the elephant, they may just get whacked by the elephant’s trunk, whacked good.… We pay a lot of good American dollars to the Greeks, Mr. Ambassador. If your prime minister gives me talk about democracy, parliaments, and constitutions, he, his parliament, and his constitution may not last long.” [Hunt, 9/1/2009, pp. 6]

Three stages of an ICBM (Intercontinental Ballistic Missile) flight. [Source: Missile Defense Agency]Defense Secretary Robert McNamara announces the US decision to deploy what he calls a “thin” anti-ballistic missile system, named “Sentinel,” designed to protect American targets against an accidental Soviet missile launch or a limited Chinese long-range ballistic missile attack. [Federation of American Scientists, 1/15/2008] The system is launched in response to a similar system deployed by the Soviet Union to protect Moscow and Leningrad. [Time, 6/5/1968] The system is based on a series of long-range radar installations and anti-missile missiles deployed in key areas throughout the US. It is designed as much to protect the Johnson administration from criticism leveled by hardline Republicans that it is “soft” on the Soviet-Chinese nuclear threat as it is to provide real protection from Soviet or Chinese missiles. The system will never be completed (see 1969-1976), though by some accounts, its limited rollout does encourage the Soviet Union to renew arms negotiations with the US. In 1968, Time magazine will observe, “The fact is that Sentinel was intended less as a truly effective defense system than as an expensive propaganda gesture for Soviet consumption.” [Time, 6/5/1968; Schwartz, 1998, pp. 286-288]

CIA Director Richard Helms, in a classified memorandum entitled “The Political Role of the Military in Latin America,” writes: “Latin American military juntas were good for the United States (see After May 30, 1961). They were the only force capable of controlling military crises. Law and order were better than the messy struggle for democracy and freedom.” [Hunt, 9/1/2009, pp. 7]

The US, the Soviet Union, Great Britain, and 58 other countries sign the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). The NPT’s preamble refers explicitly to the goal of a comprehensive nuclear test ban, and to the “determination expressed by the parties [to the treaty] to seek to achieve the discontinuance of all test explosions of nuclear weapons for all time.” The NPT will become effective on March 5, 1970. [Federation of American Scientists, 12/18/2007] In 2008, author J. Peter Scoblic will write that the NPT “relied heavily on appeals to national interest.” Scoblic will continue: “Given that the treaty allows five states to legally possess nuclear weapons while prohibiting the other 183 from ever developing them, why did dozens of states agree to the top-tiered, discriminatory system—a system of nuclear apartheid, as India put it (see June 20, 1996)? Because it made sense for them to do so.” The NPT gives nations a chance to opt out of nuclear arms races with their neighbors, and gives them the opportunity to share in nuclear technology for peaceful purposes. Over the years, far more nations will, under the NPT, give up their nascent nuclear programs—Taiwan, Brazil, Argentina, South Korea, others—than start them in defiance of the treaty. [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 274-276]

After Richard Nixon wins the presidency (see November 5, 1968), he orders a review of the Sentinel anti-ballistic missile program (see September 18, 1967). It is suspended and later reintroduced in a more modest form under the moniker “Safeguard.” Nixon says the program will protect “our land-based retaliatory forces against a direct attack by the Soviet Union.” Safeguard has serious conception and design flaws, and is never completely deployed; when the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty is signed with the Soviet Union (see May 26, 1972), the program is scaled back and eventually terminated by Congress. Author Stephen Schwartz will later write that the Sentinel/Safeguard program is “the only time that Congress has successfully voted down a major strategic nuclear weapons program supported by the executive branch.” [Schwartz, 1998, pp. 286-288; Federation of American Scientists, 1/15/2008]

Golda Meir. [Source: Al Gilbert]President Nixon dictates a memo to National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger regarding his position on Israel: “They [Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir and Israel’s ambassador to the US Yitzhak Rabin] must recognize that our interests are basically pro-freedom and not just pro-Israel because of the Jewish vote.… What all this adds up to is that Mrs. Meir, Rabin, et al., must trust RN [Nixon] completely.… He will see to it that Israel always has ‘an edge.‘… But he must carry with him the 60 percent of the American people who are in what is called the silent majority, and who must be depended upon in the event that we have to take a strong hand against Soviet expansion in the Mideast.… It is time our friends in Israel understood this. This is going to be the policy of our country. Unless they understand it and act as if they understood it right now, they are down the tubes.” [Reeves, 2001, pp. 43]

During the Chilean election campaign, when it becomes clear that leftist candidate Salvador Allende will win (see September 4, 1970), the US ambassador to Chile, Edward Korry, says: “Not a [US] nut or bolt will be allowed to reach Chile under Allende. Once Allende comes to power we will do all within our power to condemn Chile and Chileans to utmost deprivation and poverty.” Weeks later, President Nixon declares his intention to “smash” that “son of a b_tch Allende” (see September 11, 1973). [Hunt, 9/1/2009, pp. 7]

An FBI wiretap at the Israeli Embassy in Washington picks up Richard Perle, an aide to Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson (D-WA—see Early 1970s), discussing classified information with an Israeli official. This is the second time Perle has been involved in providing classified information to Israel (see Late 1969). This data was given to Perle by National Security Council staff member Helmut “Hal” Sonnenfeldt, who has been under investigation since 1967 for providing classified documents to the Israelis. [Atlantic Monthly, 5/1982; American Conservative, 3/24/2003; CounterPunch, 2/28/2004]

David Blee, a former Office of Strategic Services agent (see (1943-1944)) who joined the CIA in 1947 (see 1947), is appointed head of the agency’s Soviet Division. Thanks to his appointment, Blee replaces James Angleton as the biggest influence on Soviet policy. Angleton is an extremely controversial figure at the agency who has run counterintelligence for over two decades and views every Soviet defector as a plant. Therefore, the CIA has rebuffed many potential defectors and even imprisoned one defector under what the New York Times will call “brutal conditions.” Angleton’s theory of a “monster plot” by the Soviets against the US has also led to a witch hunt for Soviet moles at the agency, harming morale and effectiveness. For example, the agency was so blind that in 1968 it was unable to predict the Warsaw Pact’s invasion of Czechoslovakia. Blee rejects the “monster plot” theory and reverses Angleton’s policy. The CIA’s doors are thrown open to defectors and this greatly increases the number of spies the agency has in the Soviet bloc. This posting is the high point of Blee’s career and he will subsequently be regarded as one of the agency’s finest ever officers for it (see September 18, 1997). Former CIA officer Haviland Smith will comment, “He was the architect of the program that turned the clandestine service back on target against the Soviets after all the years of Angleton.” Former agency Deputy Director of Operations Clair George will add, “He had a greater intellectual command of overseas operational activity than any officer I ever knew.” [New York Times, 8/17/2000; Los Angeles Times, 8/18/2000; Guardian, 8/22/2000]

Hardline Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson (D-WA), one of the political fathers of the burgeoning neoconservative movement (see Early 1970s), attempts to derail trade negotiations with the Soviet Union by proposing an amendment that would deny trade relations with countries that did not allow free emigration, a shot at the Soviets, who force emigrating Jews to pay an “exit tax.” When Secretary of State Henry Kissinger complains that Jackson is damaging negotiations with the Soviets, Jackson retorts, “Wouldn’t it be nice to have a secretary of state who doesn’t take the Soviet point of view?” [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 83]

The US and the Soviet Union sign the Anti-Ballistic Missile Systems (ABM) Treaty. It will be ratified by the US Senate in August 1972, and will go into force in October 1972. Originally, the treaty agrees that each nation can have only two ABM deployment areas, located so that those areas cannot provide a nationwide ABM defense or become the basis for developing one. In essence, the ABM Treaty prevents either nation from developing a missile defense system (see March 23, 1983), and allows each country the likelihood of destroying the other with an all-out nuclear barrage. The treaty puts in place the doctrine of MAD, or Mutual Assured Destruction, which states that because both nations can obliterate the other in a nuclear exchange, neither one will trigger such a strike. In 1976, an addendum to the treaty further limits the number of ABM deployment areas from two to one; the Soviets will deploy a rudimentary ABM system around Moscow, but the US never does, and even deactivates its single ABM site near Grand Forks, North Dakota. In 2001, US President George W. Bush will unilaterally withdraw from the treaty (see December 13, 2001 and June 14, 2002). [Federation of American Scientists, 1/15/2008]

Richard Nixon and Leonid Brezhnev, 1972. [Source: London Times]President Richard Nixon and Soviet General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev sign the SALT I arms limitation agreement (see November 17, 1969). The anti-ballistic missile agreement (see May 26, 1972) limits each side to 200 launchers and interceptors, deployed at two widely separated sites. The restrictions are designed to prevent the establishment of an overall missile defense system by either side. The treaty also establishes a system of mutual verification, and lays down the principle of “non-interference” by one party with the verification procedures of the other; in essence, this allows both the US and the USSR to maintain overflights by reconnaissance satellites. The treaty also establishes the Standing Consultative Commission (SCC) to handle treaty-related compliance and implementation issues. [Federation of American Scientists, 1/15/2008]

Neoconservatives see Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern’s floundering campaign and eventual landslide defeat (see November 7, 1972) as emblematic of, in author Craig Unger’s words, everything that is wrong with the “defeatist, isolationist policies of the liberals who had captured the Democratic Party.” If the neoconservatives had had their way, their favorite senator, Henry “Scoop” Jackson (see Early 1970s), would have won the nomination. But the Vietnam War has put hawkish Cold Warriors like Jackson in disfavor in the party, and Jackson was set aside for the disastrous McGovern candidacy. The Republicans offer little interest themselves for the neoconservatives. Richard Nixon is enamored of one of their most hated nemeses, National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger, whose “realpolitik” did nothing to excite their ideological impulses. And under Nixon, the icy Cold War is slowly thawing, with summit meetings, bilateral commissions, and arms limitations agreements continually bridging the gap between the US and the neoconservatives’ implacable foe, the Soviet Union. In Nixon’s second term, the Coalition for a Democratic Majority (CDM)—populated by Democratic neoconservatives like Jackson, Irving Kristol, Norman Podhoretz, Midge Decter, Daniel Patrick Moynihan (Nixon’s domestic adviser), Jeane Kirkpatrick, Ben Wattenberg, and James Woolsey, and joined by 1968 Democratic presidential candidate Hubert Humphrey, will pressure Nixon to adopt a tough “peace through strength” policy towards the Soviet Union. Although it will take time, and the formation of countless other organizations with similar memberships and goals, this group of neoconservatives and hawkish hardliners will succeed in marginalizing Congress, demonizing their enemies, and taking over the entire foreign policy apparatus of the US government. [Unger, 2007, pp. 47-48]

Congressman Charlie Wilson (R-TX) contacts Israeli congressional liaison officer Zvi Rafiah regarding the Yom Kippur War. A very close working relationship develops between the two legislators that lasts many years. According to journalist and author George Crile, “Rafiah is a short, very smart Israeli who Wilson always believed was a highly placed Mossad agent.” Crile will also say: “Rafiah had always acted as if he owned Wilson’s office. One of the staffers kept a list of people he needed to lobby. He would use the phones, give projects to the staff, and call on Charlie to intervene whenever he needed him.” [Crile, 2003, pp. 31-33, 144] A close associate of prominent neoconservative Richard Perle will later be accused of passing classified secrets to Rafiah (see March 1978).

Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger begins pushing for a new nuclear weapons doctrine to supplant the idea of “mutually assured destruction” (MAD) as a final deterrent to war with the Soviet Union. Schlesinger argues that the president needs more options in the case of an armed confrontation with the USSR. Instead of the only two options being either no war, or total global annihilation, he says, the US needs to be able to pick and choose targets ranging from selected military bases to a general nuclear assault on the entire Soviet infrastructure. Because it fits with their idea of having the option of a limited nuclear war, both President Nixon and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger approve the plan. But Schlesinger says at a luncheon/press conference at the Overseas Writers Association that this is a “change in targeting strategy” that gives the US options besides “initiating a suicidal strike against the cities of the other side.” The US cannot rely solely on MAD as its only nuclear doctrine, he tells the gathered reporters. In 2008, author J. Peter Scoblic will observe, “Schlesinger was essentially parroting the conservative line, implying that MAD was a policy that could be rejected—as opposed to a condition—and that he was the one who had done it.” Schlesinger’s policy is not adopted, but his argument has the effect of chilling US-Soviet negotiations during the SALT II (Strategic Arms Limitation Talks) discussions (see June 20, 1974 and After and November 23, 1974). [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 79-80]

A group of conservative strategic thinkers and policymakers attends a dinner party in Santa Monica, California. It is at this dinner party that the notorious “Team B” intelligence analysis team will be formed (see Early 1976). The cohost of the gathering is Albert Wohlstetter (see 1965), the eminent neoconservative academic and policy analyst. The next day, the guests join fellow conservative ideologues at a Beverly Hills conference called “Arms Competition and Strategic Doctrine.” Wohlstetter uses selectively declassified intelligence data to accuse the Pentagon of systematically underestimating Soviet military might. Wohlstetter will soon publish his arguments in the Wall Street Journal, Foreign Policy magazine, and Strategic Review. In July, respected Cold War figure Paul Nitze will use Wohlstetter’s assertions in testimony before the House Armed Services Committee to accuse Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and the CIA of dangerously underestimating both the Soviet Union’s military strength and its intentions. Some old-line Cold Warriors—many of whom find themselves in sympathy with the upstart neoconservatives—begin attacking both the CIA’s intelligence reporting and the US-Soviet policy of detente. Author Craig Unger will write, “This was the beginning of a thirty-year fight against the national security apparatus in which the [neoconservatives] mastered the art of manipulating intelligence in order to implement hard-line, militaristic policies.” [Unger, 2007, pp. 48-49]

James Schlesinger. [Source: Central Intelligence Agency]Defense Secretary James Schlesinger, an opponent of arms limitations agreements with the Soviet Union, attempts to scuttle the SALT II (Strategic Arms Limitation Talks) negotiations between the two countries by telling the National Security Council that the Pentagon will not support any SALT agreement that does not guarantee US superiority in nuclear weapons. In a follow-up to his declaration, he writes a letter to neoconservative Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson (D-WA—see Early 1970s) essentially advocating Jackson’s hardline approach to dealing with the USSR, a position that undermines that of President Ford. During the Vladivostok negotiations between Ford and Soviet premier Leonid Brezhnev (see November 23, 1974), he encourages Ford to hold out for an agreement that mandates numerical equality between the two sides for the simple reason that he does not believe the Soviets will agree. Author J. Peter Scoblic calls this the “foreshadowing of a tactic that would be used by arms control opponents in the Reagan and George W. Bush administrations.” [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 80]

The Glomar Explorer. [Source: Federation of American Scientists]The CIA attempts to carry out a secretive recovery, code-named Project Jennifer, of a Soviet Golf-II ballistic submarine that sunk in April 1968 in the Pacific Ocean. The submarine, carrying nuclear missiles, had sunk in over three miles of water. Analysts believe the submarine may have been a rogue on its way to attack Hawaii. The Pentagon is capable of carrying out the necessary deep-sea recovery effort itself, but President Nixon and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger decide instead to outsource the recovery to a private firm, Summa Corporation, headed by eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes. The cover story, which has Summa attempting to mine manganese from the ocean floor, is only preserved by CIA Director William Colby feeding Watergate leads to investigative journalist Seymour Hersh to keep Hersh from finding out more about the recovery mission (see February 1975). Summa has built an enormous recovery ship, the Glomar Explorer, for the mission, and the ship goes to the site. Kissinger badly wants the submarine for verification of arms control analyses of Soviet military and nuclear capabilities, as well as for his dealings with defense hawks such as Defense Secretary James Schlesinger. The Glomar has been on site since June, but for the last two weeks an armed Soviet trawler has been near the recovery vessel, taking photographs and making the civilian crew nervous. Many in Washington worry that the Soviets may try to board the Glomar. Kissinger feels that the “intelligence coup” of the recovered sub makes the possibility of a confrontation with the Soviets worthwhile. Ford, like Kissinger and the other senior officials informed of the operation, knows that the Glomar is completely vulnerable, but if President Ford sends US naval vessels to the site, the Soviets will do the same, thus escalating the situation. Worse, the closest Navy vessels are days away. This is Ford’s first test against the Soviets. Ford orders the Glomar to continue operations, but holds off sending naval vessels to the site just yet. [Werth, 2006, pp. 28-30; Federation of American Scientists, 9/14/2006] The rescue attempt is unsuccessful; as the sub is being pulled to the surface, it breaks apart, irretrievably scattering missiles, computer components, secret codes, and everything else of real value. [Werth, 2006, pp. 56] However, unconfirmed accounts say the CIA manages to retrieve a number of items, including three nuclear missiles, two nuclear torpedoes, the ship’s code machine, and various code books. [Federation of American Scientists, 9/14/2006]

Conservative Democratic senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson (D-WA) meets with President Ford as part of a discussion about the standoff with the Soviet Union over trade and emigration of Soviet Jews to Israel. Jackson—hawkish, defense-minded, and solidly pro-Israel—sees the standoff as an opportunity to undercut Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. Jackson is a forerunner of what in later years will be called “neoconservatism” (see 1965), an ideology mostly espoused by a group of Democratic lawmakers and intellectuals who have abandoned their support for Rooseveltian New Deal economics and multilateralist foreign policies (see Early 1970s). Jackson and his outspoken pro-Israel aide, Richard Perle, view Kissinger as far too conciliatory and willing to negotiate with the Communist bloc. Jackson and Perle see the Soviet Union, not the Israeli-Palestine conflict, as the chief threat to US interests in the Middle East and the control of that region’s oil fields. They see a strong, powerful Israel as essential to their plans for US domination of the region. Jackson resists a proposed compromise on the number of Soviet Jews the USSR will allow to emigrate to Israel—the Soviets offer 55,000 and Jackson insists on 75,000—and many in the meeting feel that Jackson is being deliberately recalcitrant. “It made mo sense to me because it was sure to be counterproductive,” Ford later writes, “but he would not bend, and the only reason is politics.” For his part, Kissinger respects Jackson’s political abilities, but to his mind, Perle is a “ruthless… little b_stard.” Kissinger knows that Republican hawks as well as the burgeoning neoconservative movement will pressure Ford to abandon Richard Nixon’s policies of moderating relations with the Soviet Union and Communist China. But, author Barry Werth writes in 2006: “what Kissinger and now Ford would chronically underestimate was the neoconservatives’ argument that the United States should not so much seek to coexist with the Soviet system as to overthrow it through direct confrontation. Or the extent to which the neoconservatives would go to exaggerate a foreign threat and stir up fear.” [Werth, 2006, pp. 77-79]

TWA logo. [Source: Surfside Hawaii (.com)]TWA Flight 841, en route to New York City from Tel Aviv, explodes in mid-air. The Boeing 747 stopped in Athens for a routine layover, took off, and shortly thereafter reported an engine on fire. Soon after the report, the plane explodes and crashes into the Ionian Sea. Seventy-nine passengers and nine crew members die. A TWA spokesman in New York says that sabotage is “highly unlikely,” but a youth organization in Beirut with connections to Palestinian terrorist Abu Nidal claims that one of its members surreptitiously placed a bomb on board. In general, aviation officials scoff at the idea that a terrorist would have bombed a plane. However, in May 1995, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) will find that the plane was destroyed by a bomb. The NTSB’s final report will say that the “probable cause of this accident was the detonation of an explosive device within the aft cargo compartment of the aircraft which rendered the aircraft uncontrollable.” [Board, 5/26/1975 ; Werth, 2006, pp. 324-325]

Ford and Brezhnev in Vladivostok, 1974. [Source: Public domain]President Gerald Ford meets with Soviet Premier Leonid Brezhnev in Vladivostok. Ford, attempting to restart the moribund SALT II (Strategic Arms Limitations Talks) negotiations, finds Brezhnev willing to deal. The Soviet Union offers to sign off on one of two options: equal ceilings (allowing each side the same number of long- and short-range ballistic missiles and heavy bombers), or what he calls “offsetting asymmetries,” which would allow the US to have more MIRV—Multiple Independently Targetable Reentry Vehicle—missiles while the Soviets have more launch vehicles. Most American experts believe the “offsetting asymmetries” option is better for the US—leaving the USSR with measurably fewer MIRV launchers, warheads, and payload capacity, or “throw weight.” However, Ford, knowing he will have to get the deal past neoconservative Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson (D-WA—see Early 1970s) and his call for numerical equality, reaches an agreement with Brezhnev that both the US and USSR will be allowed 2,400 long-range delivery systems, of which 1,320 will be MIRVs. Author J. Peter Scoblic calls the deal “yet another instance of right-wing opposition to arms control undermining not only nuclear stability but the stated goals of conservatives—in this case, a US advantage in MIRVs.” When Ford returns to Washington with the deal, hardline right-wingers will fiercely oppose the deal on the grounds that the numerical equality in launch vehicles gives the USSR an untenable advantage. “[T]he agreement recognizes and in effect freezes Soviet superiority in nuclear firepower,” says New York Senator James Buckley, the only member of the Conservative Party ever to hold a Senate seat. Governor Ronald Reagan, a voluble opponent of any arms-control deals, says, incorrectly, that the Vladivostok agreement gives the Soviet Union the opportunity to have a “ten-to-one” advantage in throw weight. Though the Vladivostok agreement becomes part of the overall SALT II negotiations (see June 18, 1979-Winter 1979), conservatives among both parties will stiffen their opposition to the deal. [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 78-79]

The middle of the 1970s sees a fundamental paradigm shift among American conservatives and some formerly liberal intellectuals. 'Hawks' Disenchanted with Detente - Republican and Democratic “hawks,” defined by author J. Peter Scoblic as relatively conservative “establishment policy makers who played a higher premium on confrontation and the use of military force than did their more ‘dovish’ colleagues,” become more and more disenchanted with the US’s relations with the Soviet Union. They don’t believe that the program of detente—a gradual thawing of relations that foresees the end of the Cold War—has provided the US with any real benefits, but has allowed the USSR to build an enormous military and nuclear stockpile, more than enough to coerce the US into following its wishes. This reflects the mindset of former presidential candidate Barry Goldwater (R-AZ), who had fought negotiations with the USSR since the Eisenhower administration. Anti-Communist 'Neoconservatives' - On the other side of the debate, a group of formerly liberal intellectuals unhappy with the Democratic Party’s pacifist post-Vietnam foreign policy positions find themselves bringing their militantly anti-Communist views across the aisle to join forces with their former conservative opponents. This group will eventually dub themselves “neoconservatives” (see Late 1930s - 1950s). Joining Forces - Scoblic will write: “Like sheets of ice calving away from a glacier, the hawks and the neoconservatives fell away into the sea of conservative discontent that had been lapping at Washington’s centrist foreign policy establishment for decades. These converts shared the conservative belief that, in the Soviet Union, the United States faced an ideological enemy with messianic goals. The neoconservatives, particularly, subscribed to the simplistic good-versus-evil, us-versus-them schema that animated the Right. They believed that there were clear sides in the Cold War and worried that Democrats had forgotten this defining principle. The hawks were less moralistic but no less explicit in their assessment of the Soviet threat. They agreed that MAD [the theory of nuclear “mutual assured destruction” that says neither side will risk nuclear war because of the likelihood that both sides will be destroyed] was a choice, that nuclear war fighting was a better strategy, and that negotiation was of little value—and in doing so they effectively accepted the Manichaean worldview that had led conservatives to the same conclusion. 'Systematic Failures' of US Intelligence Community - The neoconservatives in particular bring the view that the US intelligence community has, through incompetence or perhaps outright collusion with the Soviets, systematically underestimated the Soviet threat for years, and their own assessments—based on instinct and political convictions rather than ascertainable data—are inherently more accurate than those of the CIA or the NSA. “In essence,” Scoblic will write, “they argued that the nature of the Cold War was something to be morally intuited, not empirically observed.” [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 75-76]

The Los Angeles Times prints the first story on the apparently failed Project Jennifer, the CIA’s 1974 attempt to raise a sunken Soviet submarine (see June 20-August 14, 1974). [Federation of American Scientists, 9/14/2006] The New York Times’s Seymour Hersh had learned of the secret project in mid-1974, and had prepared a story for publication while it was still underway, but the CIA persuaded the newspaper not to publish the story. After the Los Angeles Times prints its piece, the New York Times publishes the Hersh story, with a lengthy explanation of the agreement not to publish the story almost a year before. [Salon, 12/22/2005]

Alexander Solzhenitsyn. [Source: Catholic Education (.org)]Famed Soviet dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn speaks at an AFL-CIO meeting in Washington. Senator Jesse Helms (R-NC), a hardline conservative hawk who, in the words of author J. Peter Scoblic, is “an absolutist who saw the Cold War as a struggle being waged on ‘every continent’ and who was eager to speak up ‘in favor of freedom and against Communism, wherever it was found,’” attempts to arrange a meeting between Solzhenitsyn and President Ford. Ford, with an upcoming trip to the USSR and a meeting with Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev, refuses, fearing that meeting with Solzhenitsyn might sour the meeting with Brezhnev. (Ford overrides the arguments made by his chief of staff, Dick Cheney, who presses Ford to meet with the dissident.) Conservatives are outraged at what they see as naked political amorality—refusing to meet with a legitimate anti-Communist hero in order to placate a Communist leader. Conservative pundit George Will writes that the Ford White House is “showing a flair for baseness that would have stood them in good stead with the previous [Nixon] administration.” [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 76, 78]

President Ford signs the “Helsinki Final Act,” the final measure of the Helsinki Accords. This set of agreements, negotiated by the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, settles issues left standing since the end of World War II. Among other things, the Accords finalize post-war borders of a number of European nations, effectively legitimizing Soviet control over the Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. The Accords are signed by 35 nations, including the US, Canada, and every European nation except for Albania and Andorra. American conservatives decry the signing, calling it equivalent to the Yalta agreement of 1945, which they say gave far too much control of Eastern Europe to the Soviet Union after the war. Famed Soviet dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn (see Summer 1975) denounces the Accords as “the betrayal of Eastern Europe” and says that “an amicable agreement of diplomatic shovels will bury and pack down corpses still breathing in a common grave.” [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 76-77]

Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger, an avowed opponent of arms control negotiations with the Soviet Union (see Early 1974, June 20, 1974 and After, and November 23, 1974), is fired as part of President Ford’s so-called “Halloween Massacre” (see November 4, 1975 and After). The outgoing Schlesinger complains that the Ford administration is “soft” on negotiating with the Soviets, and warns that the entire idea of detente—a gradual thawing of relations between the two superpowers—is inherently a bad idea. Schlesinger becomes something of a cause celebre on the right, with Governor Ronald Reagan (see Early and Mid-1976) claiming that Schlesinger’s dismissal is because Ford is afraid to admit “the truth about our military status”—in other words, afraid to admit Reagan’s contention that the USSR has significant numerical advantages in the countries’ respective nuclear arsenals. Ford replaces Schlesinger with the head of the Office of Economic Opportunity, Donald Rumsfeld. Rumsfeld was an advocate of leaving Vietnam, but, if anything, is even a more determined advocate for US nuclear superiority and an opponent of any arms agreements with the USSR. [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 78-79] Within weeks of taking over the Pentagon, Rumsfeld begins his own efforts to undermine the SALT II arms talks (see December 1975 and After and Early 1976).

Newly appointed Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld begins working to undermine the US-Soviet arms negotiation talks almost immediately. He scuttles an informal trip by Secretary of State Henry Kissinger to Moscow; when Kissinger does reach an accord with his Soviet counterparts, Rumsfeld derails it by letting it be known that the Pentagon would not agree to the deal. President Ford later recalls, “The attitude in the Defense Department made it impossible to proceed in the environment of 1976.” [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 80-81]

CPD logo. [Source: Committee on the Present Danger]A group of hardline Cold Warriors and neoconservatives revive the once-influential Committee on the Present Danger (CPD) in order to promote their anti-Soviet, pro-military agenda. The CPD is an outgrowth of the Coalition for a Democratic Majority (CDM), itself a loose amalgamation of neoconservatives and Democratic hawks. Confederation of Establishment Conservatives, Neoconservatives, and Hawkish Democrats - The CPD is led by Eugene Rostow, the head of the CDM’s foreign policy task force. Others include CIA spymaster William Casey; iconic Cold War figure and “Team B” member Paul Nitze (see January 1976 and Late November, 1976); established neoconservatives such as Norman Podhoretz and Team B leader Richard Pipes (see Early 1976); rising neoconservative stars like Jeane Kirkpatrick, Midge Decter, Donald Brennan, and Richard Perle; conservative Democrats such as Nitze and former Secretary of State Dean Rusk; established Republicans such as House representative Claire Booth Luce (R-CT), David Packard, Nixon’s deputy secretary of defense, Andrew Goodpaster, Eisenhower’s National Security Adviser, millionaire Richard Mellon Scaife; and famed military officers such as Admiral Elmo Zumwalt. [Unger, 2007, pp. 58-59; Scoblic, 2008, pp. 99-100]No 'Realists' - Author Craig Unger will write: “Ultimately, in the CPD, one could see the emerging fault lines in the Republican Party, the ideological divide that separated hardline neocons and Cold Warriors from the more moderate, pragmatic realists—i.e. practitioners of realpolitik such as Henry Kissinger, Brent Scowcroft, George H. W. Bush, and James Baker. All of the latter were conspicuously absent from the CPD roll call.” [Unger, 2007, pp. 58-59]Advocates US First Strike against USSR - Like the CDM and Team B, the CPD believes that the entire concept of detente with the Soviet Union is an abject failure, and the only way to deal with the ravenously hegemonical USSR is through armed confrontation. Like Team B (see November 1976), the CPD insists, without proof, that the USSR has made far greater strides in increasing the size and striking power of its nuclear arsenal; and like Team B, no amount of debunking using factual information stops the CPD from making its assertions (see November 1976). The US must drastically increase its stockpile of nuclear and conventional weapons, it maintains, and also be prepared to launch a nuclear first strike in order to stop the USSR from doing the same. In April 1977, the CPD evokes the familiar neoconservative specter of appeasement by writing, “The Soviet military build-up of all its armed forces over the past quarter century is, in part, reminiscent of Nazi Germany’s rearmament in the 1930s.” Author J. Peter Scoblic will observe, “The CPD saw itself as a collection of [Winston] Churchills facing a country of [Neville] Chamberlains.” In 1978, the CPD predicts, “The early 1980s threaten to be a period of Soviet strategic nuclear superiority in which America’s second-strike capability will become vulnerable to a Soviet pre-emptive attack without further improvements in US weapons.” [Unger, 2007, pp. 58-59; Scoblic, 2008, pp. 99-100]Spreading Propaganda - According to a 2004 BBC documentary, the CPD will produce documentaries, publications, and provide guests for national talk shows and news reports, all designed to spread fear and encourage increases in defense spending, especially, as author Thom Hartmann will write, “for sophisticated weapons systems offered by the defense contractors for whom neocons would later become lobbyists.” [Common Dreams (.org), 12/7/2004; BBC, 1/14/2005]

CIA manager David Blee files a report warning others at the agency about the situation in Iran. Blee, who has some experience in Middle Eastern affairs (see (1967)), cautions that the US knows little about Iranian leader Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, in particular his stockpiling of military equipment. [Los Angeles Times, 8/18/2000]

Richard Pipes. [Source: Mariusz Kubik]After George H. W. Bush becomes the head of the CIA (see November 4, 1975 and After), he decides to break with previous decisions and allow a coterie of neoconservative outsiders to pursue the allegations of Albert Wohlstetter that the CIA is seriously underestimating the threat the USSR poses to the US (see 1965), allegations pushed by hardliners on the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. Internal Opposition - Bush’s predecessor, William Colby, had steadfastly refused to countenance such a project, saying, “It is hard for me to envisage how an ad hoc ‘independent’ group of government and non-government analysts could prepare a more thorough, comprehensive assessment of Soviet strategic capabilities—even in two specific areas—than the intelligence community can prepare.” (Bush approves the experiment by notating on the authorization memo, “Let ‘er fly!”) The national intelligence officer in charge of the National Intelligence Estimate on the USSR, Howard Stoertz, will later recall: “Most of us were opposed to it because we saw it as an ideological, political foray, not an intelligence exercise. We knew the people who were pleading for it.” But Bush, on the advice of deputy national security adviser William Hyland, agrees to the exercise. Hyland says the CIA had been getting “too much flak for being too peacenik and detentish…. I encouraged [Bush] to undertake the experiment, largely because I thought a new director ought to be receptive to new views.” The neocon team of “analysts” becomes known as “Team B,” with “Team A” being the CIA’s own analytical team. It is unprecedented to allow outsiders to have so much access to highly classified CIA intelligence as Bush is granting the Team B neocons, so the entire project is conducted in secret. CIA analyst Melvin Goodman later says that President Ford’s chief of staff, Dick Cheney, is one of the driving forces behind Team B. The outside analysts “wanted to toughen up the agency’s estimates,” Goodman will say, but “Cheney wanted to drive [the CIA] so far to the right it would never say no to the generals.” [Dubose and Bernstein, 2006, pp. 208; Unger, 2007, pp. 53-55]Political Pressure - Ford’s political fortunes help push forward the Team B experiment. Ford has been a strong proponent of detente with the Soviet Union, but his poll numbers are sagging and he is facing a strong presidential primary challenger in Governor Ronald Reagan (R-CA), an avowed hardliner. Reagan is making hay challenging Ford’s foreign policy, claiming that the so-called “Ford-Kissinger” policies have allowed the Soviet Union to leap ahead of the US both militarily and geopolitically. In response, Ford has lurched to the right, banning the word “detente” from speeches and statements by White House officials, and has been responsive to calls for action from the newly reforming Committee on the Present Danger (CPD—see 1976). In combination, these political concerns give Bush the justification he wants to push forward with the Team B experiment. Three B Teams - According to Carter administration arms control official Anne Cahn, there are actually three “B” teams. One studies Soviet low-altitude air defense capabilities, one examines Soviet intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) accuracy, and the third, chaired by Harvard Sovietologist Richard Pipes, examines Soviet strategic policy and objectives. It is Pipes’s team that becomes publicly known as “Team B.” [Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, 4/1993]Assembling the Team - Pipes fits in well with his small group of ideological hardliners. He believes that the USSR is determined to fight and win a nuclear war with the US, and he is bent on putting together an analysis that proves his contention. He asks Cold War icon Paul Nitze, the former Secretary of the Navy, to join the team. Richard Perle, a core member, has Pipes bring in Paul Wolfowitz, one of Wohlstetter’s most devout disciples. Wolfowitz immediately begins arguing for the need to deploy tactical nuclear weapons in Europe. The “incestuous closeness” of the members, as Cahn later calls it, ensures that the entire group is focused on the same goals as Wohlstetter and Pipes, with no dissension or counterarguments. Other key members include William von Cleave and Daniel Graham. The entire experiment, Cahn will write, “was concocted by conservative cold warriors determined to bury détente and the SALT process. Panel members were all hard-liners,” and many are members of the newly reconstituted “Committee on the Present Danger” (see 1976). The experiment is “leaked to the press in an unsuccessful attempt at an ‘October surprise’ [an attempt to damage the presidential hopes of Democrat Jimmy Carter—see Late November, 1976]. But most important, the Team B reports became the intellectual foundation of ‘the window of vulnerability’ and of the massive arms buildup that began toward the end of the Carter administration and accelerated under President Reagan.” Team B will formally debate its CIA adversaries, “Team A,” towards the end of the year (see November 1976). [Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, 4/1993; Quarterly Journal of Speech, 5/2006 ; Unger, 2007, pp. 53-55]'Designed to be Prejudiced' - In 2008, author J. Peter Scoblic will note, “Team B was designed to be prejudiced.” Pipes, the Soviet experts, holds a corrosive hatred of the Soviet Union, in part stemming from his personal experiences as a young Jew in Nazi-occupied Warsaw, and his belief that the Soviet system is little different from the Nazis. When asked why his team is stacked with hardline opponents of arms negotiations and diplomacy of any kind with the USSR, Pipes replies, “There is no point in another, what you might call, optimistic view.” Scoblic will write, “Team B, in short, begged the question. Its members saw the Soviet threat not as an empirical problem but as a matter of faith.” He will add, “For three months, the members of Team B pored over the CIA’s raw intelligence data—and used them to reaffirm their beliefs.” [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 93-94]

Respected Cold War foreign policy expert Paul Nitze, formerly a proponent of arms negotiations with the Soviet Union, writes an article for Foreign Affairs magazine that breaks with his previous positions (see 1976). According to author J. Peter Scoblic, Nitze’s anti-Communist stance finally overwhelms his inclination towards negotiations. Nitze writes a powerful screed opposing the SALT II arms negotiation discussions with the USSR, writing, “[T]here is every prospect that under the terms of the SALT agreements the Soviet Union will continue to pursue a nuclear superiority that is not merely quantitative but designed to produce a theoretical war-winning capability.” Soviet policy is to consider the possibility of winning a nuclear war, Nitze writes, and for years the USSR has pursued a nuclear advantage over the US. The Vladivostok agreement (see November 23, 1974), he says, gives the USSR the capability of taking out the US’s intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) with a single first strike, leaving the US left to defend itself with only submarine-launched nuclear missiles. The US would hesitate to launch such a counterstrike, Nitze argues, because the USSR would then decimate American cities with a second strike. Therefore, Nitze writes, arms negotiations with the USSR are pointless. “Unfortunately, I believe the record shows that neither negotiations nor unilateral restraint have operated to dissuade Soviet leaders from seeking a nuclear war-winning capability—or from the view that with such a capability they could effectively use pressure tactics to get their way in crisis situations.” Similarly, he writes, the entire process of detente—the gradual easing of tensions between the two superpowers—is wrongheaded and must be abandoned. The only option the US has, Nitze argues, is to ratchet up its own warmaking capabilities, and renew its focus on a viable missile defense system. Nitze’s article galvanizes conservatives, some moderate Republicans, and the emerging bloc of neoconservatives, and stiffens their combined resolve to oppose arms negotiations with the Soviets. [Foreign Affairs, 1/1976; Scoblic, 2008, pp. 81-82] Nitze will soon join the “Team B” group of conservative and neoconservative analysts (see Early 1976 and November 1976).

President Ford and Soviet General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev sign a communique relating to the SALT negotiations in November 1974. [Source: Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library / Public domain]Newly ensconsced Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, after making a series of speeches attacking Secretary of State Henry Kissinger’s policy of detente with the Soviet Union, waits until Kissinger is away visiting his Soviet counterparts in Moscow to persuade President Ford to shelve the second round of the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT II), the ongoing series of negotiations between the US and USSR to limit nuclear arms. “Rumsfeld won that very intense, intense political battle,” recalls Melvin Goodman, the head of the CIA’s Office of Soviet Affairs at the time. The move serves several purposes: to undercut Kissinger, Rumsfeld’s rival (see September 21, 1974 and After); to push Rumsfeld’s own Cold War, hawkish agenda (see June 4-5, 1974); and to set up a move to get Rumsfeld and a coterie of neoconservatives, including Paul Wolfowitz, in a position to either influence or counteract the CIA. The idea is to, in essence, hijack the US’s national security apparatus and find intelligence that will support their much harsher, antagonistic view of US-Soviet relations—and to push their belief that the US can fight and win a nuclear war. [Unger, 2007, pp. 53]

Governor Ronald Reagan (R-CA) runs for the presidency on a staunchly conservative platform of absolute anti-Communism, widespread reduction of government, and strict moral virtue. Many Republicans see Reagan as a more charismatic successor to the hardline principles espoused by former presidential candidate Barry Goldwater (R-AZ); Reagan also has the virtue of not being “tainted” by any association with Watergate. Reagan condemns the Soviet Union in near-apocalpytic terms, and denounces his Republican opponent, President Ford, both for refusing to meet with Soviet dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn (see Summer 1975) and for signing the Helsinki Accords (see August 1975), which he says gives “the American seal of approval [for] the Soviet empire in Eastern Europe.” Reagan is an absolute opponent of any sort of detente with the Soviets. His campaign echoes strongly with conservative Republicans; he nearly defeats Ford in the all-important New Hampshire primary, wins 12 states in the general primary, and reveals, in the words of author J. Peter Scoblic, “the antinegotiation attitude once the exclusive province of conservatives now appealed to rank-and-file Republicans.” Reagan loses the primary battle to Ford, but the effects are long-lasting. By the time of the Republican convention, Ford abandons the use of the term “detente” altogether, and Reagan supporters succeed in having a “Morality in Foreign Policy” plank added to the Republican platform which repudiates detente, acclaims Solzhenitsyn as a hero, and calls the Helsinki Accords a secret agreement to give unprecedented power to the USSR. Scoblic calls Reagan’s plank “a shocking rebuke to a sitting US president from his own party.” Ford is furious, but is persuaded not to oppose it by his chief of staff, Dick Cheney. [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 77-78]

A team of young, mid-level CIA and DIA analysts, informally dubbed “Team A,” debates the neoconservative/hardline group of outside “analysts” known as “Team B” (see Early 1976) over the CIA’s estimates of Soviet military threats and intentions. The debate is a disaster for the CIA’s group. Team B uses its intellectual firepower and established reputations of members such as Richard Pipes and Paul Nitze to intimidate, overwhelm, and browbeat the younger, more inexperienced CIA analysts. “People like Nitze ate us for lunch,” recalls one member of Team A. “It was like putting Walt Whitman High versus the [NFL’s] Redskins. I watched poor GS-13s and GS-14s [middle-level analysts with modest experience and little real influence] subjected to ridicule by Pipes and Nitze. They were browbeating the poor analysts.” Howard Stoertz, the national intelligence officer who helped coordinate and guide Team A, will say in hindsight, “If I had appreciated the adversarial nature [of Team B], I would have wheeled up different guns.” Team A had prepared for a relatively congenial session of comparative analysis and lively discussion; Team B had prepared for war. Ideology Trumps Facts - Neither Stoertz nor anyone else in the CIA appreciated how thoroughly Team B would let ideology and personalities override fact and real data. While CIA analysts are aware of how political considerations can influence the agency’s findings, the foundation of everything they do is factual—every conclusion they draw is based on whatever facts they can glean, and they are leery of extrapolating too much from a factual set. Team A is wholly unprepared for B’s assault on their reliance on facts, a line of attack the CIA analysts find incomprehensible. “In other words,” author Craig Unger will write in 2007, “facts didn’t matter.” Pipes, the leader of Team B, has argued for years that attempting to accurately assess Soviet military strength is irrelevant. Pipes says that because it is irrefutable that the USSR intends to obliterate the US, the US must immediately begin preparing for an all-out nuclear showdown, regardless of the intelligence or the diplomatic efforts of both sides. Team B is part of that preparation. [Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, 4/1993; Unger, 2007, pp. 53-57] Intelligence expert John Prados, who will examine the contesting reports, later says that while the CIA analysts believe in “an objective discoverable truth,” the Team B analysts engaged in an “exercise of reasoning from conclusions” that they justify, not in factual, but in “moral and ideological terms.” According to Prados’s analysis, Team B had no real interest in finding the truth. Instead, they employed what he calls an adversarial process similar to that used in courts of law, where two sides present their arguments and a supposedly impartial judge chooses one over the other. Team B’s intent was, in essence, to present the two opposing arguments to Washington policy makers and have them, in author J. Peter Scoblic’s words, “choose whichever truth they found most convenient.” [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 98]Attacking the Intelligence Community - The first sentence of Team B’s report is a frontal assault on the US intelligence community. That community, the report says, had “substantially misperceived the motivations behind Soviet strategic programs, and thereby tended consistently to underestimate their intensity, scope, and implicit threat.” Team B writes that the intelligence community has failed to see—or deliberately refused to see—that the entire schema of detente and arms limitations negotiations are merely elements of the Soviet push for global domination. Fighting and Winning a Nuclear War - Team B writes that the Soviets have already achieved measurable superiority in nuclear weaponry and other military benchmarks, and will use those advantages to cow and coerce the West into doing its bidding. The Soviets worship military power “to an extent inconceivable to the average Westerner,” the report asserts. The entire Soviet plan, the report goes on to say, hinges on its willingness to fight a nuclear war, and its absolute belief that it can win such a war. Within ten years, Team B states, “the Soviets may well expect to achieve a degree of military superiority which would permit a dramatically more aggressive pursuit of their hegemonial objectives.” [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 94-95]Lack of Facts Merely Proof of Soviets' Success - One example that comes up during the debate is B’s assertion that the USSR has a top-secret nonacoustic antisubmarine system. While the CIA analysts struggle to point out that absolutely no evidence of this system exists, B members conclude that not only does the USSR have such a system, it has probably “deployed some operation nonacoustic systems and will deploy more in the next few years.” The absence of evidence merely proves how secretive the Soviets are, they argue. [Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, 4/1993; Unger, 2007, pp. 53-57] Anne Cahn, who will serve in the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency in the Carter administration, later says of this assertion, “They couldn’t say that the Soviets had acoustic means of picking up American submarines, because they couldn’t find it. So they said, well maybe they have a non-acoustic means of making our submarine fleet vulnerable. But there was no evidence that they had a non-acoustic system. They’re saying, ‘we can’t find evidence that they’re doing it the way that everyone thinks they’re doing it, so they must be doing it a different way. We don’t know what that different way is, but they must be doing it.‘… [The fact that the weapon doesn’t exist] doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist. It just means that we haven’t found it yet.” Cahn will give another example: “I mean, they looked at radars out in Krasnoyarsk and said, ‘This is a laser beam weapon,’ when in fact it was nothing of the sort.… And if you go through most of Team B’s specific allegations about weapons systems, and you just examine them one by one, they were all wrong.… I don’t believe anything in Team B was really true.” [Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, 4/1993; Common Dreams (.org), 12/7/2004; BBC, 1/14/2005]Soviet Strike Capabilities Grossly Exaggerated - Team B also hammers home warnings about how dangerous the Soviets’ Backfire bomber is. Later—too late for Team A—the Team B contentions about the Backfire’s range and refueling capability are proven to be grossly overestimated; it is later shown that the USSR has less than half the number of Backfires that B members loudly assert exist (500 in Team B’s estimation, 235 in reality). B’s assertions of how effectively the Soviets could strike at US missile silos are similarly exaggerated, and based on flawed assessment techniques long rejected by the CIA. The only hard evidence Team B produces to back their assertions is the official Soviet training manual, which claims that their air-defense system is fully integrated and functions flawlessly. The B analysts even assert, without evidence, that the Soviets have successfully tested laser and charged particle beam (CPB) weapons. [Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, 4/1993; Quarterly Journal of Speech, 5/2006 ] (The facility at Semipalatansk that is supposedly testing these laser weapons for deployment is in reality a test site for nuclear-powered rocket engines.) [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 96]Fundamental Contradiction - One befuddling conclusion of Team B concerns the Soviets’ ability to continue building new and expensive weapons. While B acknowledges “that the Soviet Union is in severe decline,” paradoxically, its members argue that the threat from the USSR is imminent and will grow ever more so because it is a wealthy country with “a large and expanding Gross National Product.” Allegations 'Complete Fiction' - Cahn will say of Team B’s arguments, “All of it was fantasy.… [I]f you go through most of Team B’s specific allegations about weapons systems, and you just examine them one by one, they were all wrong.” The CIA lambasts Team B’s report as “complete fiction.” CIA director George H. W. Bush says that B’s approach “lends itself to manipulation for purposes other than estimative accuracy.” His successor, Admiral Stansfield Turner, will come to the same conclusion, saying, “Team B was composed of outsiders with a right-wing ideological bent. The intention was to promote competition by polarizing the teams. It failed. The CIA teams, knowing that the outsiders on B would take extreme views, tended to do the same in self-defense. When B felt frustrated over its inability to prevail, one of its members leaked much of the secret material of the proceedings to the press” (see Late November, 1976). Former CIA deputy director Ray Cline says Team B had subverted the National Intelligence Estimate on the USSR by employing “a kangaroo court of outside critics all picked from one point of view.” Secretary of State Henry Kissinger says that B’s only purpose is to subvert detente and sabotage a new arms limitation treaty between the US and the Soviet Union. [Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, 4/1993; Common Dreams (.org), 12/7/2004; BBC, 1/14/2005; Quarterly Journal of Speech, 5/2006 ; Unger, 2007, pp. 53-57]Costs of Rearmament - In 1993, after reviewing the original Team B documents, Cahn will reflect on the effect of the B exercise: “For more than a third of a century, assertions of Soviet superiority created calls for the United States to ‘rearm.’ In the 1980s, the call was heeded so thoroughly that the United States embarked on a trillion-dollar defense buildup. As a result, the country neglected its schools, cities, roads and bridges, and health care system. From the world’s greatest creditor nation, the United States became the world’s greatest debtor—in order to pay for arms to counter the threat of a nation that was collapsing.” [Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, 4/1993] Former Senator Gary Hart (D-CO) will agree: “The Pro-B Team leak and public attack on the conclusions of the NIE represent but one element in a series of leaks and other statements which have been aimed as fostering a ‘worst case’ view for the public of the Soviet threat. In turn, this view of the Soviet threat is used to justify new weapons systems.” [Quarterly Journal of Speech, 5/2006 ]

The neoconservatives of the “Team B” intelligence analysis team (see Early 1976) are unconcerned with the heavy criticism being leveled at their findings about the Soviet threat (see November 1976). Richard Pipes, the head of Team B, says that just because their facts are all wrong, their conclusions from those erroneous “facts” are still correct. Those errors are “just details,” he says. “The important thing was reading the Soviet mindset,” he asserts. “We were saying they don’t want war, but if they do have war, they will resort immediately to nuclear weapons.” Regardless of the errors, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld will hail the findings (see Late November 1976). [Unger, 2007, pp. 57]

Donald Rumsfeld. [Source: US Defense Department]Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld wholeheartedly embraces the “Team B” intelligence analysis of the Soviet nuclear and military threat (see Early 1976), regardless of the fact that the team’s reports are riddled with errors (see November 1976 and November 1976). “No doubt exists about the capabilities of the Soviet armed forces,” he proclaims after reading the team’s final report. “The Soviet Union has been busy. They’ve been busy in terms of their level of effort; they’ve been busy in terms of the actual weapons they’re producing; they’ve been busy in terms of expanding production rates; they’ve been busy in terms of expanding their industrial capacity to produce additional weapons at additional rates.” [Unger, 2007, pp. 57]

Although the entire “Team B” intelligence analysis experiment (see Early 1976, November 1976, and November 1976) is supposed to be classified and secret, the team’s neoconservatives launch what author Craig Unger will call “a massive campaign to inflame fears of the red menace in both the general population and throughout the [foreign] policy community—thanks to strategically placed leaks to the Boston Globe and later to the New York Times.” Times reporter David Binder later says that Team B leader Richard Pipes is “jubilant” over “pok[ing] holes at the [CIA]‘s analysis” of the Soviet threat. Team B member John Vogt calls the exercise “an opportunity to even up some scores with the CIA.” [Unger, 2007, pp. 57] Team member George Keegan tells reporters, “I am unaware of a single important category in which the Soviets have not established a significant lead over the United States… [This] grave imbalance in favor of Soviet military capability had developed out of a failure over the last 15 years to adjust American strategic thinking to Soviet strategic thinking, and out of the failure of the leadership of the American intelligence community to ‘perceive the reality’ of the Soviet military buildup.” Keegan’s colleague William van Cleave agrees, saying that “overall strategic superiority exists today for the Soviet Union,” and adds, “I think it’s getting to the point that, if we can make a trade with the Soviet Union of defense establishments, I’d be heartily in favor of it.” [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 95]Used to Escalate Defense Spending - The experiment is far more than a dry, intellectual exercise or a chance for academics to score points against the CIA. Melvin Goodman, who heads the CIA’s Office of Soviet Affairs, will observe in 2004: “[Defense Secretary Donald] Rumsfeld won that very intense, intense political battle that was waged in Washington in 1975 and 1976. Now, as part of that battle, Rumsfeld and others, people such as Paul Wolfowitz, wanted to get into the CIA. And their mission was to create a much more severe view of the Soviet Union, Soviet intentions, Soviet views about fighting and winning a nuclear war.” Even though Wolfowitz’s and Rumsfeld’s assertions of powerful new Soviet WMD programs are completely wrong, they use the charges to successfully push for huge escalations in military spending, a process that continues through the Ford and Reagan administrations (see 1976) [Common Dreams (.org), 12/7/2004; BBC, 1/14/2005] , and resurface in the two Bush administrations. “Finally,” Unger will write, “a band of Cold Warriors and neocon ideologues had successfully insinuated themselves in the nation’s multibillion-dollar intelligence apparatus and had managed to politicize intelligence in an effort to implement new foreign policy.” [Unger, 2007, pp. 57-58]Kicking Over the Chessboard - Former senior CIA official Richard Lehman later says that Team B members “were leaking all over the place… putting together this inflammatory document.” Author and university professor Gordon R. Mitchell will write that B’s practice of “strategically leaking incendiary bits of intelligence to journalists, before final judgments were reached in the competitive intelligence exercise,” was another method for Team B members to promulgate their arguments without actually proving any of their points. Instead of participating in the debate, they abandoned the strictures of the exercise and leaked their unsubstantiated findings to the press to “win” the argument. [Quarterly Journal of Speech, 5/2006 ]'One Long Air Raid Siren' - In 2002, defense policy reporter Fred Kaplan will sardonically label Team B the “Rumsfeld Intelligence Agency,” and write: “It was sold as an ‘exercise’ in intelligence analysis, an interesting competition—Team A (the CIA) and Team B (the critics). Yet once allowed the institutional footing, the Team B players presented their conclusions—and leaked them to friendly reporters—as the truth,” a truth, Team B alleges, the pro-detente Ford administration intends to conceal. Kaplan will continue, “The Team B report read like one long air-raid siren: The Soviets were spending practically all their GNP on the military; they were perfecting charged particle beams that could knock our warheads out of the sky; their express policy and practical goal was to fight and win a nuclear war.” Team B is flatly wrong across the board, but it still has a powerful impact on the foreign policy of the Ford administration, and gives the neoconservatives and hardliners who oppose arms control and detente a rallying point. Author Barry Werth will observe that Rumsfeld and his ideological and bureaucratic ally, White House chief of staff Dick Cheney “drove the SALT II negotiations into the sand at the Pentagon and the White House.” Ford’s primary opponent, Ronald Reagan, and the neocons’ public spokesman, Senator Henry Jackson, pillory Ford for being soft on Communism and the Soviet Union. Ford stops talking about detente with the Soviets, and breaks off discussions with the Soviets over limiting nuclear weapons. Through Team B, Rumsfeld and the neocons succeed in stalling the incipient thaw in US-Soviet relations and in weakening Ford as a presidential candidate. [Werth, 2006, pp. 341]

In 1977 Zbigniew Brzezinski, as President Carter’s National Security Adviser, forms the Nationalities Working Group (NWG) dedicated to the idea of weakening the Soviet Union by inflaming its ethnic tensions. The Islamic populations are regarded as prime targets. Richard Pipes, the father of Daniel Pipes, takes over the leadership of the NWG in 1981. Pipes predicts that with the right encouragement Soviet Muslims will “explode into genocidal fury” against Moscow. According to Richard Cottam, a former CIA official who advised the Carter administration at the time, after the fall of the Shah of Iran in 1978, Brzezinski favored a “de facto alliance with the forces of Islamic resurgence, and with the Republic of Iran.” [Dreyfuss, 2005, pp. 241, 251 - 256]

A few days before his inauguration, President-elect Jimmy Carter says to the assembled Joint Chiefs of Staff that he can envision the US and the Soviet Union having much smaller nuclear arsenals—perhaps as low as 200 submarine-based nuclear missiles each, in essence a purely deterrent force. When the comment is leaked to conservative columnists Rowland Evans and Robert Novak, the two write in their column that the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General George Brown, was “[s]tunned speechless” by the remark. In his inaugural address, Carter continues the theme of nuclear disarmament between the two superpowers, saying he intends to try to “limit the world’s armaments to those necessary for each nation’s domestic safety.” As for the world’s nuclear arsenals, he says, “[W]e will move this year a step towards the ultimate goal—the elimination of all nuclear weapons from this Earth.” [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 105]

Paul Warnke, at a 1986 press conference. [Source: Terry Ashe/Time and Life Pictures / Getty Images]President Carter’s nomination of Paul Warnke to head the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA) galvanizes opposition from conservatives throughout Washington. Long Record of Opposing Arms Buildup - Warnke, a trial lawyer who began his political career as general counsel to the secretary of defense under President Johnson and established himself as an outspoken critic of the Vietnam War, has a long record of favoring negotiations with the Soviet Union over confrontation. His 1975 article in Foreign Affairs magazine, “Apes on a Treadmill,” ridiculed the conservative idea that the only way to counter the Soviet nuclear threat is to build ever more nuclear weapons, and earned the lasting enmity of those same conservatives. “We can be first off the treadmill,” he wrote. “That’s the only victory the arms race has to offer.” Carter also wants Warnke to head the administration’s negotiating team in the SALT II (Strategic Arms Limitation Talks) with the Soviets. [New York Times, 11/1/2001; Scoblic, 2008, pp. 101]Conservative, Neoconservative Counterattack Creates Grassroots Element - The Committee on the Present Danger (CPD—see 1976) leads the opposition to Warnke’s nomination. Even before Warnke is officially nominated, neoconservatives Penn Kemble and Joshua Muravchik write and circulate an anonymous memo around Washington accusing Warnke of favoring “unilateral abandonment by the US of every weapons system which is subject to negotiation at SALT.” The memo also cites the conclusions of the Team B analysts (see November 1976) to deride Warnke’s arguments against nuclear superiority. Shortly after the memo, one of the CPD’s associate groups, the Coalition for a Democratic Majority (CDM) creates a “grassroots” organization, the Emergency Coalition Against Unilateral Disarmament (ECAUD), that actually functions out of the CDM offices in Washington. ECAUD, though an offshoot of the CDM, has a leadership made up of conservatives, including the American Conservative Union’s James Roberts, the Republican National Committee’s Charles Black, and the Conservative Caucus’s Howard Phillips. The directors of Young Americans for Freedom, the Young Republican National Federation, and the American Security Council (see 1978) are on the steering committee. And the executive director is Morton Blackwell, a hard-right conservative who works with direct-mail guru Richard Viguerie. In 2008, author J. Peter Scoblic will write, “Thus were the views of neoconservatives, hawks, and traditional conservatives given a populist base.” [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 101-102]Contentious Confirmation Hearings - Scoblic describes the opposition to Warnke at his Senate confirmation hearings as “vicious.” Eminent Cold War foreign policy expert Paul Nitze (see January 1976) lambasts Warnke, calling his ideas “demonstrably unsound… absolutely asinine… screwball, arbitrary, and fictitious.” Neoconservative Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-NY) gives over his first Senate speech to blasting Warnke; Moynihan’s Senate colleague, neoconservative leader Henry “Scoop” Jackson (D-WA—see Early 1970s) joins Moynihan in criticizing Warnke’s nomination, as does Barry Goldwater (R-AZ). Another conservative congressman accuses Warnke, falsely, of working with both Communists and terrorists: according to the congressman, Warnke is in collusion with “the World Peace Council, a Moscow-directed movement which advocates the disarmament of the West as well as support for terrorist groups.” Heritage Foundation chief Paul Weyrich uses Viguerie’s mass-mailing machine to send 600,000 letters to voters urging them to tell their senators to vote “no” on Warnke. [New York Times, 11/1/2001; Scoblic, 2008, pp. 103-104]Warnke Confirmed, but Resistance Established - Warnke is confirmed by a 70-29 vote for the ACDA, and by a much slimmer 58-40 vote to head the US SALT II negotiating team. The New York Times’s Anthony Lewis later writes of “a peculiar, almost venomous intensity in some of the opposition to Paul Warnke; it is as if the opponents have made him a symbol of something they dislike so much that they want to destroy him.… [I]t signals a policy disagreement so fundamental that any imaginable arms limitation agreement with the Soviet Union will face powerful resistance. And it signals the rise of a new militant coalition on national security issues.” [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 104]Effective Negotiator - Warnke will resign his position in October 1978. Though he will constantly be under fire from Congressional conservatives, and will frequently battle with administration hawks such as National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, he will earn the respect of both American and Soviet negotiators. In 1979, disarmament scholar Duncan Clarke will write that the Soviets come to regard Warnke as one of the toughest of American negotiators, with one Soviet official saying: “We always wondered why Americans would pay so much for good trial attorneys. Now we know.” Warnke will have a strong influence on the eventual shape of the final SALT II agreement (see June 18, 1979-Winter 1979). [New York Times, 11/1/2001; Scoblic, 2008, pp. 104] Upon his death in 2001, fellow negotiator Ralph Earle will say, “Arms control will be forever on the agenda due in large part to Paul and his articulation of the importance of the issues.” [Arms Control Today, 1/1/2002]

President Carter attempts, and fails, to forge an agreement with the Soviet Union to drastically reduce the number of nuclear weapons the two countries possess (see Mid-January, 1977). Carter’s predecessor, Gerald Ford, left him with the framework of a potentially expansive SALT II (Strategic Arms Limitation Talks) agreement signed in Vladivostok (see November 23, 1974), but that agreement still allowed for an astonishing number of nuclear weapons—2,400 apiece. (The US does not even have 2,400 delivery vehicles.) Carter proposes that both sides significantly reduce their nuclear stockpiles. But Soviet Premier Leonid Brezhnev, lacking the political capital among his more hawkish colleagues and rivals in the Kremlin, not only refuses, but decries the suggestion as nothing but American propaganda. The two nations will eventually sign the SALT II accords two years later (see June 18, 1979-Winter 1979), after a fitful negotiation process, but the agreement will differ little from the Vladivostok agreement of 1974. [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 105]

President Jimmy Carter again indicates that he intends to break with the hard line, confrontational policies of the past, particularly regarding the Soviet Union (see Mid-January, 1977). Speaking to the graduating class at Notre Dame University, Carter decries the “intellectual and moral poverty” of the Vietnam War and the militaristic mindset that drove that war, saying that for years the US has “fought fire with fire, never thinking that fire is best quenched with water.” Now that the US is “free of that inordinate fear of Communism,” the country can pursue a much different course, featuring multi-lateral, interdependent relations with a variety of countries, and abandon the isolationism and endless military buildups of the past (see June 1977). Carter will achieve very little of these goals, and by the time his single term ends, he will have begun rebuilding the US’s military and nuclear arsenal again. [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 104-105]

President Jimmy Carter cancels the B-1 bomber program, calling it unnecessary and staggeringly expensive. He says that newly developed cruise missiles, in tandem with the aging B-52 bomber fleet, can adequately deliver nuclear weapons if ever the need arises. Critics call Carter a “unilateral disarmer,” willing to give up key weapons programs without asking for a quid pro quo from the Soviet Union. Vladimir Semenov, the head of the USSR’s SALT II (Strategic Arms Limitation Talks) negotiating team, complains that Carter should have announced the cancellation during US-Soviet negotiations “[s]o that we could both have gotten credit.” [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 105]

Paul Wolfowitz, a young neoconservative with the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA—see 1973), is investigated for giving classified documents on the proposed sale of US weapons to an Arab government to an Israeli government official, through the auspices of an official with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). An inquiry is launched but later dropped, and Wolfowitz will continue with ACDA through 1980. [CounterPunch, 2/28/2004]

The American Security Council (ASC), a McCarthy-era organization originally conceived to ferret out Communists from the American business community, and now broadening its focus to oppose any sort of detente with the Soviet Union or any arms control agreements, forms the Coalition of Peace Through Strength, an association of 148 members of Congress led by Senator Robert Dole (R-KS). It opposes any sort of arms reduction agreements with the Soviet Union, and particularly opposes the SALT II (Strategic Arms Limitation Talks) treaty negotiations. By 1979, its ranks in Congress will have grown to 191, and it will have the support of over 2,400 retired generals and admirals. The organization insists that any such agreements with the Soviet Union are nothing less than a “symbol of phased surrender.” The organization is allied with other hardline conservative groups, including the American Conservative Union, Phyllis Schlafly’s Eagle Forum, Young Americans for Freedom, and a loose organization of neoconservatives and disaffected Democratic hawks called the Coalition for a Democratic Majority. [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 72-73]

During breakfast at Washington’s Madison Hotel, Stephen Bryen, a Senate Foreign Relations Committee staffer and a close associate of Richard Perle, is overheard offering to pass classified material to Zvi Rafiah, the Congressional liaison officer for the Israeli embassy and a suspected senior Mossad officer (see October 1973). [Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, 7/4/1986] “I have the Pentagon document on the bases, which you are welcome to see,” Bryen reportedly says. [Nation, 6/29/1985] The eavesdropper is Michael Saba, a businessman and former executive director of the National Association of Arab Americans. Saba, who recognizes Bryen as a staff member of the Senate Committee, promptly reports the incident to the Justice Department, which quickly launches an FBI investigation. The investigation will find that Bryen has illegally obtained classified documents of military and scientific importance and that he has been seeking material that “could prove to be a major embarrassment to the US government.” [Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, 7/4/1986] The investigation also learns that he has been meeting with Zvi Rafiah “two or three times a week.” [Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, 7/4/1986] The FBI ultimately assembles “a good circumstantial case” that Rafiah “routinely issued orders to Bryen” and will recommend that the case be brought before an investigative grand jury for espionage. Instead, the case will be closed (see April 1979). [Nation, 6/29/1985; Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, 7/4/1986]

A team of Pakistani scientists working under A. Q. Khan enriches a small quantity of uranium for the first time. Pakistan is enriching uranium in order to build a nuclear weapon, but will apparently not produce weapons-grade uranium for another three years (see (March-April 1981)). [Armstrong and Trento, 2007, pp. 98] The enrichment was performed using a P-1 centrifuge. Khan reveals that he has accomplished this to his wife Henny on April 4, 1978, so presumably it first happens some time shortly before this or on this day. The next day, Khan sends a memo on the enrichment to Ghulam Ishaq Khan and Agha Shahi, Pakistan’s ministers of finance and foreign affairs. [Levy and Scott-Clark, 2007, pp. 51]

David Blee, head of counterintelligence at the CIA, asks the NSA, FBI, and allied representatives to form a committee to evaluate the potential for a signals intelligence project codenamed VENONA and directed against the Soviet Union over the next two years. Howard W. Kulp and Mildred Hayes, who will go on to head the VENONA unit in later years, represent the NSA on the committee. [Center for Cryptologic History, 1/1/2001 ]

Albert Wohlstetter, the ideological father of neoconservatism (see 1965), arranges a meeting in Istanbul bringing together 13 Americans, 13 Turks, and 13 Europeans. Wohlstetter’s protege, Richard Perle, is possibly present. The policies discussed at the meeting later become the basis of the Turgut Ozal administration’s pro-American policies in Turkey (see September 1980)
(see December 1983). [American Enterprise Institute, 11/22/2003] Wohlstetter, a professor at the University of Chicago, is a mentor to Perle and Paul Wolfowitz. [Think Tank, 11/14/2002] He sees Turkey as “a US staging post for Middle East contingencies and as a strategic ally of Israel.” [Evriviades, 1999]

Neoconservatives Albert Wohlstetter and his protege, Richard Perle, work within the US and Israeli defense establishments to promote Turkey as a key US and Israeli strategic ally (see 1979). This effort is in part motivated by concerns raised by the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Perle and other officials in the Reagan administration play a key role in promoting an alliance between Israel and Turkey. [Evriviades, 1999; Foreign Policy Research Institute, 9/1999; Nation, 8/23/2002] This alliance is also strongly supported by “conservative Jewish-American groups working with the Turkish legation in Washington and a number of prominent Turkish-American businessmen with business and blood connections with Turkish Jews in Istanbul and those who had settled in Israel.” [Evriviades, 1999]

The theocratic regime of Iran, led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, halts all of Iran’s efforts to create either nuclear weapons or nuclear power plants. Under the previous regime, Iran had begun constructing a nuclear reactor in the city of Bushehr with the assistance of the German firm Siemens. However, Khomeini and his clerics view nuclear power and nuclear weapons as evil, and ban further work on the project. Iran will resume work in the mid-1980s when it learns that Iraq, its opponent in a long-running war (see September 1980), is working on its own nuclear weapons program, and suffers attacks from Iraqi chemical weapons (see August 13, 1981). [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 212]

A test firing of an MX missile. [Source: University of Wyoming]President Carter reluctantly gives public support to the MX nuclear missile program. The MX, first proposed in 1971, is a mobile missile platform that can, in theory, escape detection by Soviet spy satellites simply because it is mobile; by the time static satellite photos are developed and analyzed, and targeting data fed into Soviet nuclear missiles, the MX could have long since been moved. The MX has ten nuclear warheads, each capable of striking separate targets. To keep it out of Soviet sights, it can be moved around on railway cars, in vans driven on superhighways, even submerged in lakes. The MX program quickly earned heated opposition from ranchers and landowners in Western states, where the missiles would be deployed. And the Soviets do not like the program because the MX, being mobile, could be used to “spoof” the counts each side make of the other’s weapons, as mandated by treaties. Carter struggles with the program throughout his term, and finally orders 200 of the missiles and 4,600 “soft shelters” constructed in Utah and Nevada. Carter’s Republican challenger in the 1980 presidential race, Governor Ronald Reagan (R-CA), effectively lambasts Carter for his support of the program throughout the race, then after taking office in 1981, reverses course and enthusiastically supports and even expands the program (see 1981), in the process dubbing the MX the “Peacekeeper.” [Dubose and Bernstein, 2006, pp. 50-51]

US President Jimmy Carter and Soviet Premier Leonid Brezhnev sign the SALT II (Strategic Arms Limitation Talks) agreement in Vienna, after years of fitful negotiations. The basic outline of the accords is not much different from the agreement reached between Brezhnev and President Ford five years earlier (see November 23, 1974). Conservative Opposition - The Senate must ratify the treaty before it becomes binding; Republicans and conservative Democrats alike oppose the treaty. Neoconservative Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson (D-WA—see Early 1970s) compares Carter to former British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain (who allowed the Nazis to occupy part of Czechoslovakia in 1938) in accusing Carter of “appeasement in its purest form” towards the Soviet Union. Members of the Committee on the Present Danger (CPD—see 1976) appear before the Senate 17 times to argue against ratification. Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld testifies against it, calling instead for a $44 billion increase in defense spending and once again evoking the specter of Nazi Germany: “Our nation’s situation is much more dangerous today than it has been at any time since Neville Chamberlain left Munich, setting the stage for World War II.” The American Security Council launches “Peace Through Strength Week” (see November 12, 1979). And Governor Ronald Reagan (R-CA), embarking on his presidential campaign, warns the nation that the Soviets could just “take us with a phone call,” forcing us to obey an ultimatum: “Look at the difference in our relative strengths. Now, here’s what we want.… Surrender or die.” Familiar Arguments - In 2008, author J. Peter Scoblic will write that the arguments advanced against the SALT II treaty are the same as advanced so many times before (see August 15, 1974), including during the infamous “Team B” exercise (see November 1976). The Soviet Union believes it can win a nuclear war, opponents insist, and a treaty such as the one signed by Carter and Brezhnev merely plays into the Soviets’ hands. Once the US loses its significant advantage in nuclear payloads, the likelihood increases that the USSR incinerates American missile silos and dares the US to respond—the US might get off a volley of its remaining missiles, but the Soviets will then launch a second strike that will destroy America’s cities. And that US strike will have limited impact because of what critics call the Soviets’ extensive, sophisticated civil defense program. The US will have no other choice than to, in Scoblic’s words, “meekly submit to Soviet will.” SALT II plays into what the CPD calls the Soviet goal of not waging a nuclear war, but winning “political predominance without having to fight.” Scoblic will note, “An argument that had started on the fringes of the far Right was now being made with total seriousness by a strong cross-section of foreign policy experts, backed by significant public support.” Scoblic then calls the arguments “fatuous… grounded in zero-sum thinking.” The facts do not support the arguments. It is inconceivable, he will observe, that the US would absorb a devastating first strike without immediately launching its own overwhelming counterstrike. And for the critics to accept the tales of “extensive” Soviet civil defense programs, Scoblic argues, is for them to be “remarkably credulous of Soviet propaganda.” No matter what the Soviets did first, the US could kill upwards of 75 million Soviet citizens with its single strike, a circumstance the USSR was unlikely to risk. And, Scoblic will note, subsequent studies later prove the conservatives’ arguments completely groundless (see 1994). Senate Fails to Ratify - By late 1979, the arguments advanced by Congressional conservatives, combined with other events (such as the “discovery” of a clutch of Soviet troops in Cuba) derails the chance of SALT II being ratified in the Senate. When the Soviet Union invades Afghanistan (see December 8, 1979), Carter withdraws the treaty from further consideration. Scoblic will note that by this point in his presidency, Carter has abandoned any pretense of attempting to reduce nuclear armaments (see Mid-January, 1977); in fact, “[h]is nuclear policies increasingly resembled those of Team B, the Committee on the Present Danger, and groups like the Emergency Coalition Against Unilateral Disarmament” (see Early 1977 and Late 1979-1980). Carter notes that such a treaty as the SALT II accord is the single most important goal of US foreign policy: “Especially now, in a time of great tension, observing the mutual constraints imposed by the terms of these treaties, [SALT I and II] will be in the best interest of both countries and will help to preserve world peace.… That effort to control nuclear weapons will not be abandoned.” [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 105-109, 117]

According to a story in the New York Times, the Carter administration is considering its options for dealing with Pakistan’s secret nuclear weapons program. One possibility is a covert operation aimed at destroying the Pakistani nuclear research facility in Kahuta, where uranium is being enriched to make a nuclear bomb. However, no such strike will be carried out and US policy will become more favorable to Pakistan after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan at the end of the year. [New York Times, 8/12/1979; Armstrong and Trento, 2007, pp. 98]

Several hundred influential conservatives launch what they call “Peace Through Strength Week,” at a week-long conference in Washington, DC, held by the American Security Council (ASC—see 1978). The primary mission is to convince a majority of senators to vote against the SALT II (Strategic Arms Limitation Talks) arms-reduction treaty, which President Carter had signed five months before. Although the treaty sets equal limits on the number of nuclear missile launchers the US and the Soviet Union may possess, the conventioneers believe that, in the words of author J. Peter Scoblic, “it merely enshrine[s] American weakness in the face of a growing Soviet nuclear threat.” The convention is timed to coincide with Governor Ronald Reagan’s (R-CA) announcement that he is running for president, and borrows his signature phrase to describe his position on arms control. 'The SALT Syndrome' - The focal point of the ASC’s message is a half-hour film entitled “The SALT Syndrome.” Scoblic will describe it: “Set to a soundtrack fit for a horror movie, it featured image after image of missiles launching, submarines creeping, and nuclear weapons exploding, punctuated by commentary from retired generals and intelligence officials. The ‘syndrome’ was the American tendency to ‘unilaterally disarm,’ which had gripped Washington policy makers after the United States decided to follow [former Defense Secretary Robert] ‘McNamara’s theory of “no defense,” which is called “Mutual Assured Destruction.”’ The movie was a concise, vivid statement of conservative nuclear thought: MAD was a choice.” The movie tells its viewers that US citizens “play an important role in US strategy—that of nuclear hostage.” The film goes on to avow that the Soviets have produced far more missiles, long-range bombers, nuclear submarines, and various missile defenses than the US is willing to concede, giving the Soviets the capability of coercing the US into doing pretty much whatever they demand. “The movie,” Scoblic will write, “was a remarkable, and remarkably effective, piece of propaganda. It combined fact, exaggeration, and outright nonsense—one interviewee claimed the Soviet Union was on the verge of deploying particle beams that would shoot down all incoming missiles—to argue that the United States had left itself nearly helpless against a Soviet behemoth bent on world domination.” The film will play on American television stations some 2,000 times, and will reach, ASC chairman John Fisher will estimate, at least 137 million Americans. Millions of Dollars Raised to Fight SALT II - The film successfully solicits millions of dollars in contributions from concerned and frightened Americans, much of which will go to advertising efforts to combat SALT II. The ASC will outspend pro-treaty forces by a ratio of 15 to 1. [American Security Council, 3/30/1980; Scoblic, 2008, pp. 72-73]

The Supreme Court refuses to hear a case brought against President Jimmy Carter by Senator Barry Goldwater (R-AZ) and several other conservative lawmakers. In Goldwater v. Carter, the senators argue that Carter exceeded his authority in unilaterally withdrawing the United States from a mutual defense treaty with Taiwan. Carter took the unusual step in order to recognize the Communist government in mainland China as the US-recognized representative government of China. Goldwater and his fellows argued that Congress, not the president, has the power to withdraw the US from a treaty with another nation. The Court, in an 8-1 decision with liberal Justice William Brennan dissenting, rules that the case is not appropriate for the judiciary, but should be resolved via negotiation and legislation between the legislative and executive branches. Conservative Justice William Rehnquist writes the majority opinion. Congress, controlled by Carter’s Democratic Party, does not address the question of how to properly withdraw the nation from a treaty, and Carter’s action stands. [Savage, 2007, pp. 141-142; Oyez (.org), 6/2007]

Worn down by incessant opposition from conservatives, neoconservatives, and hawks in both Republican and Democratic parties, President Carter has by now abandoned his goal of drastically reducing the amount of nuclear weapons in the US and Soviet arsenals (see Mid-January, 1977). Not only has he withdrawn the already-signed SALT II treaty from consideration for Senate ratification (see June 18, 1979-Winter 1979), he has deployed nuclear missiles in Europe, approved development of the MX missile (see June 1979), and taken other steps to increase the US military buildup, including sharply increasing defense spending from his first year in office. [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 109]

Menachem Begin and Jerry Falwell. [Source: Bibliotecapleyades (.net)]Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin seeks to expand his base of influence in the US. Israel has long enjoyed the support of liberal Democrats, so Begin begins reaching out to conservative American evangelicals who, in many cases, espouse anti-Semitic views (see February 1, 1972). But more important to Begin is the fact that these conservative Christians are becoming politically active and powerful. Begin seeks out conservative televangelist and political activist Jerry Falwell, who publicly views the birth of Israel as “the fulfillment of Biblical prophecy.” Falwell has often said that the friendship between the US and Israel is a cornerstone both of political stability in the Middle East and a matter of faith. Begin presents Falwell with the prestigious Jabotinsky Award, making Falwell the first non-Jew to ever receive the award. More tangibly, he also gives Falwell’s ministry a private jet. [Unger, 2007, pp. 109]

Markus Wolf, the chief of East Germany’s Hauptverwaltung Aufklarung (HVA) intelligence agency, has a sober conversation with Yuri Andropov, the head of the Soviet Union’s KGB intelligence agency. In his autobiography, Wolf will later recall: “We began discussing the East-West conflict. I had never before seen Andropov so somber and dejected. He described a gloomy scenario in which a nuclear war might be a real threat. His sober analysis came to the conclusion that the US government was striving with all means available to establish nuclear superiority over the Soviet Union. He cited statements of President Carter, his adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, and of Pentagon spokesmen, all of which included the assertion that under certain circumstances a nuclear first-strike against the Soviet Union and its allies would be justified.… Carter’s presidency had created great concern in the Kremlin, because he had presented a defense budget of more than $157 billion, which he invested in the MX and Trident missiles (see June 1979) and nuclear submarines (see Late 1979-1980). One of the top Soviet nuclear strategists confided to me that the resources of our alliance were not sufficient to match this.” [Fischer, 3/19/2007]

A Peacekeeper test firing at Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands. [Source: US Army]President Ronald Reagan, reversing his campaign opposition to the MX mobile nuclear weapons platform (see June 1979), now enthusiastically supports the program, which he dubs, without apparent irony, the “Peacekeeper.” He first proposes housing them in superhardened Minuteman missile silos, which is roundly derided as ridiculous given that the entire raison d’etre of the MX is its mobile capacity. Reagan then appoints a commission, chaired by former National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft and having former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld as one of its members, to study ways of making the program work. The commission finally recommends that 100 MX missiles be deployed in Minuteman silos in Wyoming, as well as smaller, single-warhead MX missiles, dubbed “Midgetmen,” to complement the main missile program. Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill (D-MA) opposes the program. Iconoclastic Republican John Perry Barlow, a Wyoming rancher and sometime-lyricist for the Grateful Dead, lobbies Washington lawmakers against the MX. He sees it as a huge step away from “mutually assured destruction” (MAD) and towards a first-strike policy, which would, in Barlow’s eyes, be potentially catastrophic. He finds Rep. Dick Cheney (R-WY), who strongly supports the program, a worthy adversary. “I must have lobbied more than one hundred members of Congress on this, and Dick was the only one who knew more about it than I did,” Barlow will later recall. Washington Post columnist Mary McGrory accompanies Barlow to one meeting with Cheney. After listening to the intense debate, McGrory tells Barlow, “I think your guy Cheney is the most dangerous person I’ve ever seen up here.” Barlow will recall: “I felt we were really arguing about the fate of the world.… Cheney believes the world is an inherently dangerous place, and he sees the rest of the world as… populated by four-year old kids with automatic weapons.” Congress will eventually give Reagan only fifty of the MXs, but in part to placate him, Cheney, and their allies, authorizes the start of what will become a multi-billion dollar weapons platform, the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), later dubbed “Star Wars.” [Dubose and Bernstein, 2006, pp. 51-53]

Harvard political scientist Samuel P. Huntington (see Summer 1993) writes of US foreign policy: “The architects of power in the United States must create a force that can be felt but not seen. Power remains strong when it remains in the dark; exposed to the sunlight it begins to evaporate.” [Hunt, 9/1/2009, pp. 8]

The US begins launching what the Pentagon calls “psychological operations,” or PSYOPS, against the USSR. The operations consist in part of military exercises designed to agitate and frighten the USSR into believing the US might be preparing for a military assault. Few outside of the White House and the Pentagon’s top officials—and Soviet officials, of course—know about the series of provocative exercises. Undersecretary of Defense Fred Ikle will later recall: “It was very sensitive. Nothing was written down about it, so there would be no paper trail.” The idea behind the operations is to keep the Soviets off-balance about what, if anything, the US might do. It also is designed to probe for gaps and vulnerabilities in the Soviets’ early warning intelligence system. General Jack Chain, a Strategic Air Command (SAC) commander, will later recall: “Sometimes we would send bombers over the North Pole and their radars would click on. Other times fighter-bombers would probe their Asian or European periphery.” Sometimes the operations send out several probes in a week, coming at irregular intervals to make the effect that much more unsettling. Then the probes stop, only to begin again several weeks later. Undersecretary of State for Military Assistance and Technology Dr. William Schneider will later recall: “It really got to them. They didn’t know what it all meant. A squadron would fly straight at Soviet airspace, and other radars would light up and units would go on alert. Then at the last minute the squadron would peel off and return home.” The operations include naval incursions as well as aerial missions, with US aircraft carrier groups regularly conducting exercises alarmingly close to Soviet military and industrial sites, often without being detected until the groups are already in place. Some exercises simulate surprise attacks on Soviet targets, sometimes simulating air assaults on Soviet fighter units. The naval pressure is particularly intense in the area of the North Atlantic called the “Greenland-Iceland-United Kingdom (GIUK) gap.” [Fischer, 3/19/2007]

Newly elected President Ronald Reagan begins his first term with a cabinet and senior staff made up of two quite different brands of conservatives. Reagan biographer Lou Cannon, in his 1991 book President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime, will describe an administration riven between “pragmatists” or “realists,” whom their opponents dismiss as “accomodationists” or “one-worlders,” and “conservatives” or “Reaganauts,” whom their opponents label “crazies” or “hard-liners.” Both groups staunchly oppose communism and support increased defense spending, but they diverge on the subject of negotiating with the Soviet Union. The “pragmatists” favor working to extend the idea of detente with the USSR, while the “Reaganauts” see any such negotiations as nothing but appeasement of a murderous and implacable foe (see June 18, 1979-Winter 1979). During Reagan’s first term, particularly in the first three years, the “Reaganauts” hold the upper hand in setting his administration’s foreign policy. In 2008, author J. Peter Scoblic will write, “This period marked the closest conservatives came during the Cold War to seeing their principles translated into policy.” It also marks the closest the world came to an all-out nuclear war between the two superpowers since the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1963 (see November 2-11, 1983). The “pragmatists” will have much more say in setting policy during the last five years of Reagan’s presidency, and as a result will help engineer a dramatic reduction in tensions between the US and the Soviet Union as well as a treaty eliminating an entire class of nuclear weapons (see December 7-8, 1987). By the end of Reagan’s presidency, many conservatives have gone from enthusiastically supporting his policies to considering him a traitor to their ideology (see 1988). [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 115-116]

The Soviet Union’s intelligence directorate, the KGB, releases a classified study that concludes the USSR is losing the Cold War it has been waging for decades with the United States. In Soviet terminology, the “correlation of world forces” between the US and the USSR is turning in favor of the United States. This assessment is strikingly different from one conducted in 1971, when the USSR was seen as equivalent to the US in power and global influence, and the so-called “Brezhnev Doctrine” is seen as a counterpart to the US’s “Monroe Doctrine” in Latin America and the “Carter Doctrine” in the Persian Gulf, giving the USSR hegemony over much of Asia and Eastern Europe. Marxist doctrine presumed that the “correlation of forces” is scientifically based, and will lead inevitably to the triumph of communism over other competing political and social systems. But the last 10 years have not gone according to plan. The USSR is caught up in its own Vietnam-like quagmire in Afghanistan. Soviet gains in Indochina, Angola, Afghanistan, Ethiopia, and Nicaragua are being countered by the US’s own expansionism, particularly in the Persian Gulf. Cuba, the Soviet foothold in the Western Hemisphere, is foundering economically and draining Soviet resources at an alarming rate. The Soviet-backed regimes in Afghanistan, Angola, and Nicaragua are battling against potent US-backed insurgencies. The US is backing human rights activists in Poland and the USSR itself. And the US populace is largely supportive of the Carter- and Reagan-led arms buildup (see Late 1979-1980 and Early 1981 and After). [Fischer, 3/19/2007]

President Reagan embarks on what will become the largest peacetime military buildup in US history. “I look forward with great enthusiasm and eagerness as we begin to rearm America,” says Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, one of the hard-liners in Reagan’s Cabinet (see January 1981 and After). (President Carter had never disarmed America; he had backed the MX missile (see June 1979) and steadily increased spending on conventional arms, raising the Pentagon’s budget significantly during his last year in office.) Reagan wants to more than double the US defense budget, from $171 billion to $368 billion, by 1986. He wants more weapons, more weapons programs, and more nuclear arms. He reauthorizes the B-1 bomber program canceled by Carter (see June 1977) and the so-called “neutron bomb,” a nuclear weapon designed to release more radioactivity—thereby killing more people—with a lessened explosive power—thereby damaging less property. He authorizes the deployment of 3,000 cruise missiles aboard aircraft, and accelerates the development of the Trident II submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM), nuclear-capable ocean-based cruise missiles, and the B-2 “stealth” bomber. [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 117]

Harold Brown, a nuclear physicist and former secretary of defense under President Carter, warns of overconfidence regarding the ability of the US, and the world, to survive a nuclear holocaust, as many in the incoming Reagan administration seem to espouse (see Early 1981 and After). “The destruction of more than 100 million people in each of the United States, the Soviet Union, and the European nations could take place during the first half-hour of a nuclear war,” Brown writes. “Such a war would be a catastrophe not only indescribable but unimaginable.… It would be unlike anything that has taken place on this planet since human life began.” [Air Force Magazine, 3/2008]

In conjunction with his huge peacetime military buildup (see Early 1981 and After), President Reagan strongly opposes any sort of arms control or limitation discussions with the Soviet Union. Rostow to ACDA - As a member of the Committee on the Present Danger (CPD—see 1976), Reagan had spoken out against the SALT II arms control treaty with the USSR (see June 18, 1979-Winter 1979), calling it “fatally flawed.” He has opposed every significant arms limitation agreement since 1963, no matter whether it was negotiated by Republican or Democratic administrations. To continue his opposition, Reagan appoints Eugene Rostow to head the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA). Rostow, a fellow CPD member, is flatly opposed to any sort of arms control or disarmament agreement with the Soviet Union, and had led the CPD fight against the SALT II agreement. “Arms control thinking drives out sound thinking,” he told the Senate. [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 118-120] During his confirmation hearings, Rostow tells Senate questioners that the US could certainly survive a nuclear war, and gives World War II-era Japan as an example—that nation “not only survived but flourished after a nuclear attack.” When asked if the world could survive a full nuclear attack of thousands of nuclear warheads instead of the two that Japan had weathered, Rostow says that even though the casualties might be between “ten million… and one hundred million… [t]he human race is very resilient.” [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 126] Rostow’s aide at the ACDA, Colin Gray, says that “victory is possible” in a nuclear war provided the US is prepared to fight. [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 127]Burt to State Department - Reagan names Richard Burt to head the State Department’s Bureau of Politico-Military Affairs, the State Department’s primary liaison with the Defense Department. Burt, a former New York Times reporter, is one of the few journalists synpathetic to the CPD, and recently called the SALT agreement “a favor to the Russians.” Just before joining the Reagan administration, Burt called for reductions in nuclear arms controls: “Arms control has developed the same kind of mindless momentum associated with other large-scale government pursuits. Conceptual notions of limited durability, such as the doctrine of mutual assured destruction [MAD], have gained bureaucratic constituencies and have thus been prolonged beyond their usefulness. There are strong reasons for believing that arms control is unlikely to possess much utility in the coming decade.” [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 118-120; US Department of State, 2008]Perle to Defense Department - Perhaps the most outspoken opponent of arms control is neoconservative Richard Perle, named as assistant defense secretary for international security affairs. Perle, until recently the national security adviser to Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson (D-WA—see Early 1970s), will quickly become, in author J. Peter Scoblic’s words, “the administration’s chief arms control obstructionist, dubbed ‘the Prince of Darkness’ by his enemies.” Perle once said: “The sense that we and the Russians could compose our differences, reduce them to treaty constraints… and then rely on compliance to produce a safer world. I don’t agree with any of that.” Now Perle is poised to act on his beliefs. [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 118-120]Vice President Bush - Although seen as a pragmatist and not a hardline conservative (see January 1981 and After), Vice President George H. W. Bush is also optimistic about the chances of the US coming out on top after a nuclear exchange with the Soviet Union. During the 1980 campaign, he told a reporter: “You have a survivability of command and control, survivability of industrial potential, protection of a percentage of your citizens, and you have a capability that inflicts more damage on the opposition tham it inflicts on you. That’s the way you can have a winner.” [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 126-127]Other Appointees - Perle’s immediate supervisor in Defense is Fred Ikle, who headed ACDA in 1973 and helped battle back part of the original SALT agreement. Ikle will be primarily responsible for the Pentagon’s “five-year plan” that envisions a “protracted nuclear war” as a viable option (see March 1982). Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger considers the standoff between the US and the Soviet Union akin to the situation between Britain and Nazi Germany in 1938, with himself and his ideological confreres as Britain’s Winston Churchill and any attempt at arms control as nothing but appeasement. Energy Secretary James B. Edwards says of a hypothetical nuclear war, “I want to come out of it number one, not number two.” Pentagon official Thomas Jones tells a reporter that the US could handily survive a nuclear exchange, and fully recover within two to four years, if the populace digs plenty of holes, cover them with wooden doors, and bury the structures under three feet of dirt. “If there are enough shovels to go around, everybody’s going to make it,” he says. Reagan’s second National Security Adviser, William Clark, will, according to Reagan official and future Secretary of State George Shultz, “categorically oppos[e] US-Soviet contacts” of any kind. Some of the administration’s more pragmatic members, such as Reagan’s first Secretary of State Alexander Haig, will have limited access to Reagan and be cut off from many policy-making processes by Reagan’s more hardline senior officials and staffers. [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 118-120, 127; Air Force Magazine, 3/2008]

President Reagan, recuperating from surgery to remove an assassin’s bullet, tells bedside visitor Terence Cardinal Cooke that God spared his life so that he might “reduce the threat of nuclear war.” Censored Letter to Brezhnev - The day after his conversation with Cooke, Reagan pens a letter to Soviet Premier Leonid Brezhnev calling for “disarmament” and a “world without nuclear weapons.” Brezhnev does not read Reagan’s words; Reagan’s aides, horrified at the letter, rewrite it and strip out all the phrases calling for a reduction in nuclear weapons before sending it to Brezhnev. Aides Refuse to Draw up Plans for Disarmament - In the following weeks, Reagan will call nuclear weapons “horrible” and “inherently evil,” and order his aides to draw up plans for their elimination. His aides will refuse to deliver those plans; one adviser, Richard Burt (see Early 1981 and After), will exclaim: “He can’t have a world without nuclear weapons! Doesn’t he understand the realities?” Wants to Stop Nuclear Armageddon - Reagan believes in the literal Biblical story of Armageddon—the End Times—and believes that it will come about through the use of nuclear weapons. Unlike some conservative Christians (and some of his advisers), he does not relish the prospect, and in fact believes it is his task to prevent it from happening. Plans to Reduce Nuclear Arms Based on Prescience, Ignorance - Author J. Peter Scoblic will note it is difficult to reconcile the view of Reagan as an advocate of nuclear disarmament with the confrontational, sometimes apocalyptic rhetoric and actions by him and his administration (see Early 1981 and After, Early 1981 and After, September 1981 through November 1983, March 1982, and Spring 1982), but Scoblic will write: “Each of these efforts, however, can also be interpreted as a sincere, if misguided, product of Reagan’s hatred of nuclear weapons. Reagan believed that the Soviets would reduce their atomic arsenal only if they were faced with the prospect of an arms race.” Reagan realizes—ahead of many of his advisers—that the USSR was moving towards a calamitous economic crisis, and believes that the Soviets will choose to step back from further rounds of escalation in order to save their economy from complete collapse. He also believes, with some apparent conflict in logic, that the only way to reduce US nuclear arms is to increase the nation’s military arsenal. “Reagan emphasized time and again, that the aim of his arms build-up was to attain deep cuts in nuclear weapons,” biographer Paul Lettow will write. “[M]ost people did not listen to what he was actually saying.” Scoblic cites what he calls Reagan’s profound ignorance of nuclear strategy and tactical capabilities as another driving force behind Reagan’s vision of nuclear disarmament. He is not aware that submarines and long-range bombers carry nuclear missiles; he believes that submarine-based nuclear missiles can be called back once in flight. Both ideas are wrong. He tells foreign policy adviser Brent Scowcroft that he did not realize the primary threat from the Soviet Union was that its gigantic arsenal of ICBMs might obliterate the US’s own ICBM stockpile. When journalists ask him how the MX missile program (see 1981) that he has asserted will rectify the threat to American ICBMs, as he has asserted, he confesses that he does not know. And he honestly does not seem to understand that his administration’s confrontational, sometimes overtly belligerent actions (see May 1982 and After, June 8, 1982, March 23, 1983, and November 2-11, 1983) cause apprehension and even panic among the Soviet military and political leadership. Scoblic will write that like other hardline conservatives, “Reagan could not believe that anyone could perceive the United States as anything but righteous.” 'Subject to Manipulation' - Reagan’s desire for a reduction in nuclear arms is not matched by any depth of understanding of the nuclear weapons issues. Therefore, Scoblic will observe, “[h]e was susceptible to manipulation by advisers who shared his militant anti-communism but not his distaste for nuclear deterrence and who wanted neither arms reduction nor arms control.” When he names George Shultz as his secretary of state in mid-1982, he gains a key ally in his plans for nuclear reduction and a counterweight to arms-race advocates such as Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger and other hardliners who have worked (and continue to work) to sabotage the administration’s arms negotiations with the Soviet Union. He gains another ally when he replaces National Security Adviser William Clark with the more pragmatic Robert McFarlane. Both Shultz and McFarlane will support Reagan’s desire to begin sincere negotiations with the USSR on reducing nuclear arms, as does his wife, Nancy Reagan, who wants her husband to be remembered by history as reducing, not increasing, the risk of nuclear war. [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 136-138]

Yuri Andropov, the head of the Soviet KGB intelligence agency, tells a group of KGB officers that the US is actively preparing for war with the USSR, and warns of “the possibility of a nuclear first strike” by the Americans. The KGB describes the program thusly: “One of the chief directions for the activity of the KGB’s foreign service is to organize detection and assessment of signs of preparation [for a surprise nuclear attack] in all possible areas, i.e., political, economic and military sectors, civil defense and the activity of the special services.” Andropov, who will become the head of the Soviet government in 1982, helps direct the KGB and GRU (the Soviet military intelligence agency) to make preparations for that strike its top priority. The agencies instruct Soviet agents in NATO capitals and Japan to make “close observation[s] of all political, military, and intelligence activities that might indicate preparations for mobilization.” The program, called VRYAN (the Soviet acronym for “Surprise Nuclear Missile Attack”), takes even greater priority once Andropov rises to power. [Fischer, 3/19/2007; Scoblic, 2008, pp. 134] (Others such as CIA researcher Benjamin Fischer will refer to the program in their writings as “Operation RYAN.”) Fischer will write that VRYAN, or RYAN, is based on “genuine fears” among the Soviet military and political leadership. Andropov’s KGB in particular feels that the international situation, or what the Soviets call the “correlation of world forces,” is “turning against the USSR and increasing its vulnerability.” In conjunction with the Reagan’s administration hardline stance towards the Soviet Union, an increase in US-led military exercises and psychological warfare missions conducted close to Soviet borders, and an increase in the US’s ability to thwart Soviet early warning systems, this perception prompts the Soviets to not only voice their concern over the possibility of a US first strike, but to prepare for it. Fischer also notes that in some ways, Operation VRYAN and Moscow’s uneasiness over the US threat is sparked by bitter memories of Operation Barbarossa, the 1941 surprise invasion of the Soviet Union by the Nazis. The program, Fischer will write, abandons caution and the usual tradecraft of intelligence-gathering, and instead relies on often-unreliable data supplied by East German intelligence sources. [Fischer, 3/19/2007]

President Reagan, giving the commencement speech at West Point’s graduation ceremonies, makes a strong statement of his belief that the Soviet Union is an “evil empire” that must be defeated in one sense or another. “I am told there are links of a great chain that was forged and stretched across the Hudson [River] to prevent the British fleet from penetrating further into the valley,” he tells the graduates. “Today, you are that chain, holding back an evil force [communism] that would extinguish the light we’ve been tending for 6,000 years.” Days before, Reagan told another graduating class that the West would not “contain communism, it will transcend communism.” [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 116]

Reagan officials reopen the stalled Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) arms limitation talks with the Soviet Union, against the advice of President Reagan’s more hardline officials (see January 1981 and After). The talks center on the Soviets’ SS-20 missile, designed to strike European targets. In return, then-President Carter had agreed to deploy US intermediate-range nuclear missiles—Pershing II’s and Tomahawks—in West Germany and Italy by 1983. According to author J. Peter Scoblic, the missiles have little real military value, as American ICBMs, submarine-based nuclear missiles, and long-range bombers could destroy Soviet targets with near-impunity. They do, however, have some political significance, mostly in helping tie European security to US security. Carter had agreed to open talks with the Soviets to get rid of the SS-20s entirely. Hardliners Sabotage Talks - The more pragmatic Reagan officials succeed in reopening the talks; Reagan hardliners, thwarted in stopping the talks, set about sabotaging them in any way available. When arguments in favor of delays and “further study” finally fail, they pressure Reagan to offer an agreement they know the Soviets will refuse: the so-called “zero option,” which originates with Defense Department official Richard Perle (see Early 1981 and After). Perle says that the Soviets should remove all of the SS-20s, and in return, the US will not deploy its Pershings and Tomahawks—in essence, having the Soviets concede something for essentially nothing. State Department officials suggest a fallback position in case the Soviets reject Perle’s offering; in his turn, Perle appears before the Senate Armed Services Committee and compares anyone who opposes his zero-sum offering to Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement of Adolf Hitler in 1938. 'Walk in the Woods' - When the Soviets reject Perle’s option, Reagan hardliners argue that the government should accept no compromise. The head of the INF negotiation team, Paul Nitze—a Cold War figure who has come out against arms control (see January 1976) but is not fully trusted by the hardline ideologues because of his history as an arms negotiator—wants a compromise. In official negotiations, he sticks to the all-or-nothing position of Perle, but opens private, informal negotiations with his Soviet counterpart, Yuli Kvitsinsky. One afternoon in 1982, Nitze and Kvitsinsky go for what later becomes known as their “walk in the woods.” Sitting together on a log during an afternoon rainstorm, the two hammer out an agreement that greatly favors the US—mandating a 67 percent reduction in Soviet SS-20s and allowing the US to deploy an equal number of Tomahawks. Not only would the Soviets have to reduce their already-deployed contingent of missiles and the US be allowed to deploy missiles, because the Tomahawks carry more independent warheads than the SS-20s, the US would have a significant advantage in firepower. The deal also sets limits on SS-20 deployments in Asia, and forbids the Soviets from developing ground-launched cruise missiles. In return, the US would agree not to deploy its Pershing missiles. Hardliners Block Agreement - Perle and his hardline allies in the Reagan administration succeed in blocking acceptance of the Nitze-Kvitsinsky agreement. As author J. Peter Scoblic later writes, “Perle’s ideological obstructionism—concisely conveyed in his disparagement of Nitze as ‘an inverterate problem-solver’—reached fantastic heights.” Perle first tried to block Reagan from even learning the details of the agreement, and lied to Reagan, asserting falsely that the Joint Chiefs of Staff opposed the agreement. Perle, in conjunction with Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, eventually convinces Reagan to stick to the “zero option.” Perle argues against pressure from key US allies such as Britain’s Margaret Thatcher, telling Reagan, “We can’t just do something; we’ve got to stand there—and stand firm.” In 1983, Perle tells Weinberger that it would be better for the US to deploy no missiles at all than to accept the agreement. Scoblic will write: “In other words, he argued that foregoing deployment in return for nothing was better than foregoing deployment in exchange for something. The position made no sense, but the Reagan team held firm to it, once again preventing the adoption of a viable arms control deal.” When the US deploys Pershing missiles in Europe in November 1983, the Soviets walk out of the talks. [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 120-123]

The US Senate approves an aid package for Pakistan worth $3.2 billion. This makes Pakistan the third largest recipient of US assistance after Israel and Egypt, and is in response to Pakistani support for the anti-Soviet resistance in Afghanistan. The aid is granted despite the fact that Pakistan has a nuclear weapons program, as Congress is assured that the aid is conditional on Pakistan stopping this program (see September 1981). However, Pakistan does not do so and informs the Reagan administration of this (see Mid-December 1981). [Levy and Scott-Clark, 2007, pp. 89] Due to an amendment introduced by Congressman Stephen Solarz (D-NY), aid for any country that detonates a nuclear device will be cut off. Author Dennis Kux will note that this makes “the ‘tacit’ understanding about Pakistan’s not testing (see April 1981)… a legal requirement for US aid.” [Armstrong and Trento, 2007, pp. 118-119]

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